Book description
John Eppler thought himself to be the perfect spy. Born to German
parents, he grew up in Egypt, adopted by a wealthy family and was
educated in Europe. Fluent in German, English and Arabic, he made the
Hadj to Mecca but was more at home in high society or travelling the
desert on camelback with his adopted Bedouin tribe. After joining the
German Secret Service in 1937, in 1942 he was sent across the desert
to Cairo by Field Marshal Rommel. His guide was the explorer and
Hungarian aristocrat Laszlo Almasy, a man made famous by the book The
English Patient. Eppler's mission, Operatin Condor, was to infiltrate
British Army Headquarters and discover the Eighth Army's troop
movements and battle plans. In The Rebecca Code, Mark Simmons reveals
the story of Operation Condor and its comedy of errors and how it was
foiled by Major A W 'Sammy' Sansom of the British Field Security
Service. it is a tale of the desert, of the hotbed of intrigue that
was 1940s Cairo, and the spy who was to send his reports using a code
based on Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca.
Mark Simmons was born in Plymouth and served in the Royal
Marines with 40 Commando RM, 3 Commando Brigade, and with the Commado
Logistics Regiment. He has written over 100 feature articles mainly on
naval/military and travel subjects for publications in the UK and US.
He is a correspondent for Warships International Fleet Review, and the
author of A Crack in Time, From the Foam of the Sea and The Serpnt and
the Cross and Matapan: The Trafalgar of the Mediterranean.
