HITLER'S PLOT TO KILL THE BIG THREE

The setting for this tale is Teheran, one of the apparently innumerable spy capitals of World War II, which, in late 1943, was the site for a meeting which brought Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin within range of eager Nazi assassins. Unfortunately for the Germans, the attempt was badly bungled: by a series of fantastic strokes of luck, the forty agents sent to dispatch the Big Three walked right into the custody of Allied operatives. A last minute escape set a few on the loose, but in the end, all were thwarted by a cool Iranian who sold his services to the highest international bidder. The narrative flows smoothly, and the author, a former espionage agent, is relatively successful in convincing us of the plot's authenticity. His remarks on the Allied leaders, and on the Conference, possibly reflect a Hungarian's bias: Roosevelt is portrayed as Stalin's fool, and the Yalta sellout charge here is moved back in time to Teheran. The reader who gets involved in the semifictionalized romances of the Allies' spies may be let down when the story ends; we never do find out whether the oft-raped waif, Wanda, unites with the stuffy but decent Merser. A readable and well-paced account, to be taken with equal parts of salt and suspended disbelief.