The Nude on the Cigarette Case

The war in Europe is public, but something else was going on, quietly, behind the scenes, never making headlines in major newspapers or news programs on radio. Walter Lippman doesnt write about it and Edward R. Murrow never mentions it in his CBS news broadcasts. That something is the exchange of nuclear fission information between mathematicians and physicists in the Unites States, England, and Europe. In 1939 that information exchange has diminished in volume between the western scientific communities and those under German control and influence, most notably Denmark and Norway.

Sarah Bennett, the nude on the cigarette case, has been kidnapped and is being held in the Redhook area of New York by German agents. Bennett, a scientist, travels Europe under the guise of an art dealer but is also the conduit for shared information between scientists in Nazi dominated Europe and those in the United States. And Max Grant, in love with a photo on a cigarette case, is just the guy to go looking for her.