Publisher's Synopsis
1905 Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany broods over a comment his cousin King George V of Britain has made, a boast that his fleet is the largest and most advanced in the world. In a fit if jealousy he commissions the construction of a secret base to be located off South America. A secret naval base is constructed 200 miles off French Guyana as an industrial waste disposal site built by a firm based out of Columbia. The submarines based there wreak havoc upon the sea lane during WWI only their contribution does not contribute victory. The base is sealed, and the crews sworn to secrecy on pain of death.
Hitler comes to power and is made aware of the islands existence and it is recommissioned, and submarines are deployed to the island in the mid-1930s where they get ready for war. War breaks out and again the U-boats wreak havoc on the sea lanes. The war goes badly, and their contribution is not sufficient to turn the tide. The SS then takes command of the base and begins to ship tons of looted bullion from occupied countries to the base, ostensibly to fund a South American Front. The reality is to fund Nazi leaders lives in hiding when they begin to flee Europe and relocate to South America to escape the noose that awaits most of them. Only the SS General in command of the island in the last months of the war is determined to start a South American front. When he discovers the truth that it was all for nothing...he kills the Kriegsmarine Crew and then he and his SS command each vow to avenge Adolf Hitler by sealing the base and committing suicide to keep the bullion away from those he deemed traitors to his cause and that of Adolf Hitler.
75 years later on the same island a world-weary man arrives with his career and personal life in shambles; he has discovered his wife is having a rather heated affair with an attorney. Something he discovered when his wife accidentally calls home while she is with 'him'.
He loves her so instead of kicking her to the curb he allows her to continue seeing him on the condition she keeps it discrete. His motivation while unconventional is meant to keep his children's lives undisrupted. He then takes a vacation he cannot afford to sort out his life, if possible. Vacationing in a run-down, cheap resort in a shark-infested bungalow, he goes exploring against the advice of a local preacher who isn't really a preacher at all but a former British deep-cover agent with a secret he shares with a former SS officer.
He discovers the secret in a near accident; a secret that spans a century, beginning in a darkened chamber of the Kaisers palace to a dank bunker in war-torn Berlin and ending in a musty church where the Odessa Legacy is reawakened...A secret that latter day Nazis are near to discovering themselves.
