Nom De Guerre: Ivan

American Intelligence Officer in the Spanish Civil War

Hitler’s air force and army are in Spain—and the International Brigades are fighting them! Only a special man is recruited as the top Intelligence Officer for the International Brigades of Volunteers fighting the German-Italian-Spanish Fascist coalition in Spain in January, 1937. Having only recently returned from two years of studies in Moscow on a scholarship, American Labor Union Organizer and polyglot Johnny Gerlach is that man. He will be made an instant Lieutenant in the heroic 15th Brigade upon his arrival in Spain at the International Brigades Base in Albacete, and given the nom de guerre: Ivan. Now he will have to prove how special he is. From looking deeply into the horrors of war as he interviews English and American Volunteers accused of desertion in battle, to reporting on the combat readiness of troops and commanders, while dodging bullets, bombs, artillery fire and even a 109 Messerschmitt fighter plane strafing his staff car—and then working as the Head of Counter-Intelligence at the Front Line himself—Ivan nails his duties according to his American values, while meeting his Soviet-trained superiors’ expectations, performing a dangerous political tightrope walk act in the big tent of the Spanish Civil War. Ivan must pick his friends and allies and even lovers like an acrobat picks his sure-handed team members in a high-flying trapeze act: allies like the legendary 15th Brigade’s Croatian Commander, Col. Vladimir Copic and the Washington Battalion Commander Mirko Markovic who recruited him in the first place, and friends like the former Abraham Lincoln Battalion Commander Robert Merriman, and America’s three most important war correspondents he takes to the Front Line—Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn and Herbert Matthews. But while Ivan weathers three battles before he barely escapes both the icy embrace of the lethal winter and the onslaught of Gen. Franco’s army and air force taking over the mountains of Teruel—and then the Front Line breaks, everywhere, under the weight of the German blitzkrieg—is Ivan using up the last of his cat’s nine lives? Will Ivan be finally snared in a Stalinist plot—or will he pull off his final political tightrope performance and live to see the Statue of Liberty again? The man who has answered to no one but himself for two years must now dig deep into his bag of tricks to cross the remaining feet of this tense high wire tightrope, if he is to live to tell his tale.