Chameleon - Chameleon, #1 - E-book - ePub

He will risk everything for his country, he'll die to stop Hitler becoming Chancellor, he will kill to protect his friends, he would die for his country. Meet the Chameleon... Inspired by real events: Kurt is a good-looking Lutheran from the slums of Berlin. An orphan of WWI, taken in and raised by a wealthy Jewish couple, Mamma and Papa Kaufmann, who give him not only a loving home, but the best advantages money can buy.
Amidst the political turmoil of the late 1920s, Kurt is seemingly uninterested by the radicalism of the Bolsheviks and the Nazis. Kurt is accepted into the Prussian War Academy as an officer cadet. Over the next two years, Kurt proves himself to be an exceptional cadet and soon comes to the notice of Oberst Count Max von Wallenberg, head of a covert Abwehr Counterespionage unit, and steps are put into motion to recruit him.     On the eve of Kurt's commissioning as an officer, Papa Kaufmann is gunned down by Nazis outside his office.
It's a devastating blow for Kurt, and an epiphany.      Kurt is mysteriously sent from the academy to the Bavarian Alps to undergo months of gruelling and top secret "special training". When he returns to Berlin as a commissioned Leutnant, realising that someone is pulling strings, he is finally recruited to the Abwehr.     1932, Max meets an old war friend from the Austrian police, Oscar Schmidt, who has a very interesting and scandelous story to tell about Hitler's wilderness years in Vienna and his friendship with a blackmailer, art forger and murderer, Philip Beck.
Beck is in Germany and was arrested and detained until Oskar arrived to take him back to Vienna, where he is wanted for murdering his landlord/lover. Only someone let him go and now Beck is on the run ... or is head?     Oskar tells Max that while investigating Beck, he discovered there is a police dossier on Hitler, a dossier that mysteriously went missing in 1923. Oskar tells Max that the dossier was taken by Major Burgamann, head of the Austrian Secret police and contains information that would destroy Hitler's credibility.     Hitler's friend and chauffeur, Julius Schreck sends the homicidal maniac Bruno Metz to Austria to find the missing dossier.
But the dossier has been taken to safety by Burgamann's secretary , and the Major suffers a heart attack and dies before Bruno can find anything out.    Meanwhile, iIn France, Hrach is hiding out, waiting for his old friend, Marcus Wolff a shady character from the Munich criminal underworld, has promised to buy the Hitler dossier from him, so Hrach can escape. But Bruno Metz is hot on the trail. bSo is the Abwehr, who learn that Wolff has a secret address in a boarding house run by a lesbian opera singer, Fräulein Georg , where Wolff's gay lover lives.
Max realises that they have to get an agent into the house to intercept the dossier as soon as Marcus Wolff shows up with it. There's just one problem: The house on Türkenstrasse is no ordinary boarding house; the tenants are all gay young artists. Boris, who suspects that Kurt is gay, suggests that Kurt would be ideal for the mission. He even has a talent for drawing, Boris tells Max.     In the Türkenstrasse house, Kurt soon falls into the Bohemian lifestyle and falls deeply in love with Wolff's lover, Xavier Knopp, who has Asperger's.
Soon, Kurt will not only have to fight for his own life, he'll have to fight to save the lives of his friends and lover and a deadly and bloody duel ensues that will leave many people dead, and Kurt's true skill as a marksman comes into its own.