Courtney’s War

Europe during the Second World War. Gerhard von Meerbach serves in the German army despite his opposition to Nazism and is sent into the destruction of Stalingrad. Saffron Courtney is recruited by the Special Operations Executive and dispatched to occupied Belgium. The parallel narratives contrast the mass destruction of the Eastern Front with clandestine work in occupied western Europe, where betrayal may destroy an entire resistance network.

Saffron must discover how German intelligence has penetrated an Allied network while Gerhard tries to survive the Eastern Front and retain contact with opponents of Hitler. Their separated stories examine resistance, compromised service and the choices imposed on people trapped inside hostile states. Both characters serve institutions whose wider strategy they only partly understand, and their efforts to communicate become an act of resistance to the ideological war separating them.