The Eagle Has Flown/Mrs. Pollifax And The Whirling Dervish [antikvár]

At one o'clock on the morning of Saturday, November 6, 1943, Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfiihrer of the SS and chief of state police, received a simple message: the eagle has landed. A small force of German paratroopers under the command of Oberstleutnant Kurt Steiner, aided by IRA gunman Liam Devlin, were at that moment safely in England and poised to snatch the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, from the Norfolk country house where he was spending a quiet weekend near the sea. By the end of the day—thanks to a bloody confrontation in the village of Studley Constable between American Rangers and the Germans—the mission was a failure, Liam Devlin apparently the only survivor. As for Kurt Steiner . . . London-Belfast: 1975 CHAPTER ONE There was an Angel of Death on top of an ornate mausoleum in one corner, arms extended. I remember that well because someone was practicing the organ, and light drifted across the churchyard in colored bands through stained-glass windows. The church wasn't particularly old—built on a high tide of Victorian prosperity, like the tall houses surrounding it. St. Martin's Square. 9