Stealing Thunder

Stealing Thunder, Peter Millar, Bloomsbury, 2000

British-American journalist Eamonn Burke is on a less-than-promising assignment. He has been asked by Sabine Kotzke, a German magazine editor, to investigate the rumor that Russian atom bomb spy
Klaus Fuchs was killed to keep him from revealing something about the atom bomb. The conventional wisdom is that he died peacefully behind the Iron Curtain after being exchanged in an East-West prisoner swap.

Burke makes a few inquiries in British Intelligence, and manages to get certain people very interested in what they are doing. The story then shifts into high gear, and moves to Berlin and Moscow, where a man who was about to give important information to Burke and Kotzke is helped out an 11th floor window just before their arrival. Now they know they're onto something big.

Sometime just after World War II, an American bomber equipped to carry atomic bombs went missing. For unknown reasons, it was on a flight to Russia, but only got as far as Iceland. Lots of people, on both sides, will stop at nothing to make sure the secret of what the bomber was carrying stays secret.

Switching back and forth between present-day Europe and Los Alamos in 1945, this story takes a while to get going, but once it does, watch out. This is an intelligent and compelling story that makes the reader re-think assumptions about the Cold War. This well-researched tale of alternate history actually reaches the rarefied atmosphere of Wow.