Nathan and Allison soon develop feelings for one another, but as their relationship deepens they move ever closer to their dangerous goal. Allison Fisher, a brilliant young scientist who can speak French he travels to her lab at the University of Chicago for a crash course in nuclear physics, then they embark on their adventure. The physicist was a friend of his father's, and Nathan's mission is to return to Berlin via France and smuggle him out of Europe. There he learns that the Allies are racing to develop a nuclear weapon before the Nazis, and a German theoretical physicist is hoping to defect. To his surprise, he is quickly selected for a special assignment he is trained as a spy, and ordered to report to the Manhattan Project. While attending an evening course at Columbia in 1941, Nathan notices a recruitment poster on a university wall and decides to enlist in the military and help fight the Nazi regime. His idyllic childhood was soon marred by increasing levels of bigotry against his family and the rest of the Jewish community, and after his uncle is arrested on Kristallnacht, he leaves Germany for New York City with only his mother's wedding ring to sell for survival. Nathan Silverman grew up in Berlin in the 1920s, the son of a homemaker and a theoretical physicist. From the winner of the National Jewish Book Award-A spy mission to rescue a defector from Germany and prevent the Nazis from creating an atomic bomb.

An Affair of Spies by Ronald H. Balson