Welcome to my stop on the blog tour today! I’m delighted to share a wonderful extract from The Counterfeit Candidate by Brien Klein!
About the Book
The Counterfeit Candidate
by
Brien Klein
Berlin, 30th April, 1945
As the Russian Army closes in on the war-torn City, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun take their own lives. Their bodies are burned and buried in the Reich Chancellery garden, above the Führer’s bunker.
Buenos Aires, 9th January, 2012
Three audacious thieves carry out the biggest safe depository heist in Argentine history, escaping with more than one hundred million dollars’ worth of valuables. Within hours, an encrypted phone call to America triggers a blood-soaked manhunt as the thieves are tracked down, systematically tortured, then murdered.
San Francisco, 18th January, 2012
Senator John Franklin, hailed as the ‘Great Unifier’, secures the Republican Presidential nomination and seems destined for the Oval Office. Despite the sixty-seven year interval and a span of thirteen thousand miles, these events are indelibly linked.
Chief Inspector Nicolas Vargas of the Buenos Aires Police Department and Lieutenant Troy Hembury of the LAPD are sucked into a dark political conspiracy concealing an incredible historical truth stretching from the infamous Berlin bunker to Buenos Aires and to Washington, which threatens the very heart and soul of American democracy.
About the Author
Brian Klein is an award-winning Television Director, with over twenty-five years’ experience in the industry. His work regularly appears on Netflix, Amazon Prime, BBC and Sky. Amongst his directing credits are twenty-five seasons of the iconic car show, TOP GEAR and five seasons of A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN ROADTRIP, Sky One’s highest rating entertainment show. He has also directed two feature-length films for BBC Worldwide and five entertainment specials for Netflix. THE COUNTERFEIT CANDIDATE is his debut novel.
6th January 2012
Buenos Aires
The tunnel was almost finished. It had taken three hugely determined men eight months to construct and ran straight from the basement of the Café Torino directly underneath the safe
depository of the Banco Estero. The eminent bank was one of the oldest in Argentina and stood, imperiously, on Avenida Cabildo, deep in the heart of the fashionable Belgrano district of Buenos Aires in the north- east of the city. The hundred-foot tunnel had state-of-the-art ventilation, sensor activated lighting and pure wool carpet flooring. The enormous underground structure was a magnificent feat of engineering. The small gang had worked every night and weekend for eight months and between them had moved over four thousand, five hundred cubic feet of dirt, making nearly three thousand wheelbarrow trips.
Pedro García rested the drill by the side of the newly formed earth wall. He stopped chewing, carefully removed the gum from his mouth and stared up at the twelve-inch-thick concrete ceiling, appreciating they had finally reached the floor of the depository. Pedro allowed himself a rare smile as he stroked his straggly salt and pepper beard. He hadn’t shaved since the very first day the drilling had begun.
“Guys, this is it. We are standing directly underneath twelve hundred
beautiful boxes and only god knows what’s inside them.”
One of his two comrades leapt across the shag pile carpet and bear- hugged his leader. “I’ll tell you what’s in them. New lives for all of us.” Ricardo Gonzales was the youngest of the three robbers and by far the most impetuous. “Pedro, you said we would do it and we have. I love you, old man.”
Ricardo was a stunning hulk of a man. He stood six-foot-six in his bare feet and his body was honed to within an inch of its life. When he wasn’t digging tunnels, he was working out seven days a week in his local gym and had done far more than his fair share when it came to heaving wheelbarrows full of dry earth.
The third man shook his head slowly. “Ricky, it’s not done yet. Nothing is done until we are laying on a beach somewhere far away, with more money than we know what to do with.”
At sixty-three, Sebastian Ramos was the oldest of the three and by far the most cautious. He’d spent two long spells inside the notorious Caseros prison, in the south district of the city, for robbery and firearms offences, and that meant this job was his last roll of the dice.
Follow the bloggers on #TheCounterfeitCandidate blog tour!
With thanks to Sofia and Midas PR for my blog tour invite!
Ronnie Turner ~ Author & Book Blogger 