Jack Higgins · 1975 · thriller

Jack Higgins's 1975 thriller. After Mussolini's rescue, Hitler asks idly whether Churchill could be taken the same way, and a feasibility study nobody meant seriously becomes an operation. A disgraced Fallschirmjager colonel and an IRA gunman are sent to a Norfolk village where the Prime Minister is expected for a weekend - and the plan very nearly works.

1. 1
   Warsaw

   On a station platform in Poland, Colonel Kurt Steiner intervenes to save a Jewish girl from the SS - the act that destroys his career, costs his men their unit and leaves them available for a mission nobody else would be given.

2. 2
   Berlin

   In Berlin, Himmler turns an idle remark of the Fuhrer's into a live operation and puts Colonel Radl to work on it - and the feasibility study comes back saying, inconveniently, that it could actually be done.

3. 3
   Alderney

   Steiner's paratroopers train in secret on German-held Alderney, rehearsing a drop and a withdrawal by E-boat in Polish uniforms with German kit underneath - a fiction that holds only until somebody looks closely.

4. 4
   Studley Constable

   They land on the north Norfolk coast for a weekend when Churchill is expected nearby - and it runs perfectly until a child falls into a mill race, a soldier saves her, and the uniform underneath is seen.