A House at War

About the Book

A novel by Allan J. Dorfman

1940 - As Germany overruns Europe and the United States draws closer to war, President Franklin Roosevelt assigns Commander Mark Kur-tan to command of the destroyer Flemming, the first American warship equipped with radar and other advanced technology.  While the ship is fitted out and tested in England, a German spy infiltrates the ranks of the ship's personnel.

Mark Kurtan is married to Penelope and has one teen age son, Glen. The marriage is strained because Penelope wants Kurtan to quit the navy.  His father, Aristotle Kurtan, in New York and his grandfather, Marko Kurtanokorus, in Greece, are two of the largest shipping magnates in the world.

Adolph Hitler and Hermann Goering contrive to capture the Flemming and expose Roosevelt as a war monger because he has committed an Ameri-can warship to a war zone while the U.S. is at peace.  This exposure could cause Roosevelt to lose his bid for reelection.  The Germans plot to disable the ship and dispose of its crew with submarines, aircraft with poison gas bombs, and sabotage by the spy aboard.  Goering's elite special forces will parachute on to or near the ship and take it over.

The Flemming is assigned to the escort of the battleship Texas.  The Texas has departed from South Africa carrying billions in the gold reserves of Britain and other allied nations. Commander Kurtan's grand-father has sold out his empire and will sail to America via South Afri-ca and Uruguay on his own gold laden ship, the Uranus.  Kurtan's wife and son, unaware that the commander is sailing away from England on a secret mission, sail from New York towards England on one of her father -in-law's tramp steamers, the Marko II.

One of the crew is murdered and a bomb is discovered aboard the Flemming as she sails towards her rendezvous with the Texas. After the bomb is thrown overboard the destroyer fights off U-boats and aircraft in battles that must remain secret.

The Marko II is torpedoed by a U-boat and sinks.  The only surviv-ors are Kurtan's wife and son and a handful of the crew and passengers. They escape the Germans by sailing into a storm.

The Uranus, Marko Kurtanokorus' ship, is disabled in the mid South Atlantic.  The vessel drifts to and grounds violently on Nightingale Island.  Volcanic eruptions are taking place on a nearby island and there are heavy seas and earth tremors to contend with.

The survivors of the Marko II are rescued by a German flying boat. They are flown to a secret base in French West Africa, but the base commander receives orders to kill them.

Friends of the Kurtans in Switzerland and Japan inform influential Germans that Aristotle Kurtan will pay a large reward for information leading to the fate of Penelope and Glen.    

At the German base in French West Africa Penelope and Glen are saved at the last minute by an order from Berlin.  They are put on board a U-boat that is diverted to assist a wolf pack sailing to con-front the Flemming.

Aristotle Kurtan heads for Nightingale Island on the Phoenician Star in order to rescue his father.  Following his ship is an armed merchant vessel crewed by gangsters and cutthroats who plan to destroy Aristotle's and Marko's ships and pirate the gold.

As the Flemming prepares to defend itself against German submar-ines and aircraft, the spy takes over the electronic and weapons con-trol room of the ship.  He holds the crew there at gun point while the vessel lays a smoke screen and averts torpedoes and mines laid by the U-boats and bombs dropped by the planes.  The spy is electrocuted by a booby trap. At the final stage of the battle, with the Flemming's fuel tanks on empty and the enemy closing in, the ships from the Texas task force arrive and drive away the Germans.  One of the surviving U-boats, U-126, escapes with Penelo

About the Author

Allan Dorfman is a native of Brooklyn and now resides in San Diego County’s north coastal area. He attended Brooklyn College, The Brooklyn Museum of Arts and Sciences, The New York Institute of Finance, UC Los Angeles and San Diego, and the U.S. Army Information School. The author currently manages his own international real estate and business brokerage company. He was a news writing specialist for the U.S.A. Information Service, a plumber, an architectural designer, stock broker, and a builder and developer. Allan spends his time writing, sending and receiving E-mail from property and business owners throughout the world, studying history, and webmastering his business’s web site.