The Company of Strangers

The Company of Strangers
Robert Thomas Wilson

Stunning European-based thriller from an acclaimed young British author: ‘A class act’ – Sunday Times; ‘First in a field of one’ – Literary ReviewLisbon 1944. In the torrid summer heat, as the streets of the capital seethe with spies and informers, the endgame of the Intelligence war is being silently fought.Andrea Aspinall, mathematician and spy, enters this sophisticated world through a wealthy household in Estoril. Karl Voss, military attaché to the German Legation, has arrived embittered by his implication in the murder of a Reichsminister and traumatized by Stalingrad, on a mission to rescue Germany from annihilation. In the lethal tranquility of this corrupted paradise they meet and attempt to find love in a world where no-one can be believed.After a night of extreme violence, Andrea is left with a lifelong addiction to the clandestine world that leads her from the brutal Portuguese fascist régime to the paranoia of Cold War Germany, where she is forced to make the final and the hardest choice.

The Company of Strangers

Robert Wilson

For Janeandin memory of my father

1922–1980

Author’s Note (#ulink_22476138-74ad-55fb-8bdd-0ffd8180765a)

Extract from ‘An Arundel Tomb’ from Collected Poems by Philip Larkin reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#ud739a779-cbc1-56b8-abe3-702b427c0511)

Title Page (#ub936daa4-bcdd-58d8-905d-db9432911d34)

Dedication (#u43749c56-1f73-5690-9759-208f8e86e5cf)

Author’s Note (#u0e14e52c-615a-5a94-81bd-dd83644cd345)

Epigraph (#u1d1441a7-96cf-5c6d-af6c-791e26736fca)

Book One Outlaws of the Mind (#uc9aa9341-0337-57d6-8f8c-78c145333d1b)

Chapter 1 (#u1aeb140e-254e-5fb2-8e4e-401f3c12faec)

Chapter 2 (#ufa60c3e9-42ab-53d5-b9a1-b104360fa3db)

Chapter 3 (#uad8bcd7a-395d-5eb9-994f-7037fa04ea36)

Chapter 4 (#ud9a05b74-9368-5410-93d6-82fa4ac9058e)

Chapter 5 (#u5268117e-0e21-57f7-87d2-f79d52f38f2c)

Chapter 6 (#u7c4affb5-cf7b-519d-a62b-ffe12d398b9c)

Chapter 7 (#u48e6da7a-afaf-5b13-a83d-e93bedd191fe)

Chapter 8 (#u91dd4d97-1f92-5876-8783-e79376bec746)

Chapter 9 (#u2acf9675-3c83-58c1-8544-bc1524142a87)

Chapter 10 (#u6084c240-1a8e-54be-a5df-9daa023c3272)

Chapter 11 (#uc02eb817-65e6-55a2-a3db-d7a308a36f7d)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)