Summary
A symphony of sabotage unfurls inside a nation still clinging to neutrality: Count Johann von Bernstorff, velvet-gloved puppet-master of the Wilhelmstrasse, threads an invisible noose around America’s jugular before Berlin and Washington have even slammed their diplomatic doors. At the latticed heart of this clandestine web squats Otto Goltz—Prussian wolf in bespoke broadcloth—who, with his monocled shadow Wolff von Eidel, choreographs strikes that scream, mills that blossom into infernos, and locomotives that somersault off trestles. Their war room is a sooty loft above the clangorous arteries of an unnamed steel metropolis; from here Otto courts, then cages, the flame-haired Lillian O’Grady, whose bruised body becomes a cartography of cruelty. When her pulse finally stills, grief detonates inside Rosie’s sweetheart—Dick Gregory, doughboy poet with bayonet convictions—who hunts Otto through tenement fog and across munition-flat rooftops until saboteur and avenger lock in a death-gargle beneath a torn American flag. Otto expires; von Eidel is manacled; yet loyal Teutonic expatriates storm the jailhouse in a last-ditch Black-Balloon coup. A vigilante posse—factory rivets still clinging to their boots—turns the prison yard into a fusillade-lit opera, leaving von Eidel limp and home-grown traitors rattling iron bars. Far across the Atlantic, as Pershing’s boots splash into French mud, Kaiser Wilhelm—hunched in a candle-snuffed study—shreds communiqués and howls at the marble busts of his ancestors.
Synopsis
Before diplomatic relations between the United States and Germany have been severed during World War I, Count Johann von Bernstorff establishes an intricate spy network in America, headed by the treacherous Otto Goltz and his ally, Wolff von Eidel. Their activities result in labor strikes, factory explosions, and transportation disasters. Headquartered in a major U.S. industrial center, Otto marries Lillian O'Grady and treats her so brutally that she eventually dies. Lillian's death is avenged by a young American soldier named Dick Gregory, who is in love with her sister Rosie. Following Otto's death, von Eidel is arrested, but when a group of German sympathizers tries to rescue him, a patriotic vigilante group attacks the jail, shooting the spy and imprisoning the disloyal Americans. In the end, as American forces storm France, Kaiser Wilhelm grows desperate.
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