Finisterre, Hurley - B

       This is a thoroughly enjoyable novel set in the year 1944. There are two parallel stories that intersect at the end of the book. The best story is that of Kapitan Stefan Portisch, an honored and very successful submariner, whose ship founders off the Spanish coast and is destroyed on its rocky shore. He survives and is nursed back to health by a Spanish woman, Eva. Eventually, the Civil Guards, accompanied by Germans take him in, and the Germans accuse him of desertion. They offer him a firing squad in the morning, or a chance to live by spinning a tale to the British. He tells the tale after the British send him to London. After extensive vetting, they tell him they want the truth, or else. On the other side of the world, Hector Gomez is an FBI agent seconded to the Los Alamos project under the guise of being an army lieutenant. His primary role is providing feedback to Washington because Hoover is livid over the FBI being excluded from a role in the Manhattan project. Gomez unearths a German attempt to frighten the US into believing one of the scientists is leaking to Germany. The tale Portisch told the British was part of the same subterfuge. The Afterword states that each and every person in the book was real, and tells what they did after the war.