Edward Goes To Venice:
In Armistice Plot long after the Great War was over, Edward was sent by Churchill to Venice. Why? Venice was headquarters for the von Wessels, Hitler’s chief spies. Herr von Wessel, Hitler’s financier, operated his trading empire from there. Edward was to find certain letters sent from Hitler to Herr von Wessel informing him what he was planning to do next to rise to power in Germany during the early 1920’s.
Edward runs into all sorts of adventures and misadventures along the way. He even takes a ride on the Orient Express. But in the end he makes it back to Winston.
The novel Armistice Plot begins at an archaeological site at Carchemish in 1914 as Edward Ware’s father and Leonard Woolley close down their dig in the face of war. As Edward peers into the tent at midnight he sees a dark-robed intruder brushing past the figurine of an ancient Hittite king that he and T.E.Lawrence excavated at Carchemish this summer in 1914.
Is this a spy sent by the Germans to steal the maps Lawrence is sketching for the British military? Edward first encounters the vamp who will haunt the rest of his life prowling among the finds, looking for the military maps that his fellow archaeologist T. E.Lawrence is drawing for the British government.
All during the ensuing Great War Edward must fight to keep the maps secret. Finally during the Battle of Damascus Edward and Lawrence defeat the Turks and make them sue for peace. They will sign the Armistice ending the war. But the vamp, though imprisoned in Damascus, escapes. Edward must chase her down.
There are hints that she is fleeing to join with the Austrian corporal, Adolf Hitler, who is beginning a new movement in Munich. Signs of a new war appear on the horizon though the first has just come to an end with an Armistice that isn’t worth the paper it is written on.
This is an historical thriller about Edward’s contest to the death first with the German Kaiser and then with Hitler himself. It will determine the woman he will marry and the woman he will not. It will drive him to the brink of madness in a century gone insane.
