Krelle’s Inferno
“Where were you on D-Day?”
There was a sharp, menacing tension in the soldier’s voice, and Krelle felt his heart jump.
It was the question that most terrified Krelle, the one he’d hoped never to be asked. The truth was too horrible, too dangerous, to confess even now. Especially now.
Stay calm. Breathe.
Imagine if…
…Robert Harris’s Fatherland and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle fell in love, then had a child that grew up to love Apocalypse Now. That is Krelle’s Inferno, a counterfactual historical fiction novel set in a post-World War II world where the D-Day invasion of June 1944 failed, leaving a victorious Soviet Union in near-total control of Europe.
Krelle’s Inferno differs from other novels in this genre by creating a counterfactual World War II-era story with an original twist; rather than Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan winning the war, instead the same sides won and lost, but the failed invasion of Normandy led to a far different, and far more dangerous, world where Soviet power appears unstoppable and on the brink of igniting communist revolution throughout the world.
The beleaguered United States and Great Britain, the Soviets’ erstwhile Allies against Nazism, are desperate to build an intelligence network inside Soviet-occupied Germany before a new “Iron Curtain” falls over the Continent; they turn to Geren Krelle, a former German military intelligence officer who has lost his family, his nation, and his freedom to the war, and hates each of the victorious powers for good reason. Little do the Americans and British know, however, the deep secret Krelle carries, one that has everything to do with what happened on June 6, 1944 and why the world stands on the brink of yet another global war. Krelle must confront his own demons, prejudices, and guilt in order to accomplish his missions and save those he loves—and to save himself.
Krelle is offered an opportunity to head a team of Americans into Soviet-occupied Germany to find General Reinhard Gehlen, another former German military intelligence officer, who has offered up thousands of captured documents containing Soviet military and political secrets. Krelle agrees to head Operation Chrysalis after seeing evidence that suggests the whereabouts of members of his family.
Krelle’s team—International Red Cross pilot Marlis “Ems” McKibbin, American soldier Vincent Montiglione, and doctoral student Mitchell Bamberger—works with actual historical figures like the American pilot Jackie Cochran and British intelligence commander Ian Fleming to enter Germany, find Gehlen and his document caches, and build a spy network inside Soviet-occupied Europe. Along the way, they also uncover some of the great mysteries of the war, including the fates of European Jews and others in the east….