The Judas Tell

A Second World War thriller about a British spy-mistresses’ interrogation of her Gestapo counterpart in a quest to discover the fate of Noor Inayat Khan, a young Muslim spy she sent to occupied France.

In 1942 Hitler issued his famous Nacht und Nebel edict. Any British spies the Gestapo captured could be transported, imprisoned, tortured and executed in secrecy. They would simply disappear into the night and fog. Post-war Germany. Taciturn spy-mistress Vera Atkins is Britain’s most formidable interrogator. Her opponent is Hans Joseph Kieffer, the charismatic Head of Gestapo in Paris who has recently been captured by the British. It’s the perfect match. Vera is on an obsessive quest to discover what happened to the women she sent undercover to France while Kieffer is desperately trying to give nothing away so Vera has no evidence to hang him for war crimes. A deadly game of cat-and-mouse ensues in which Vera appears to hold all the cards but Kieffer taunts her when he senses Vera’s weakness is her guilt for sending the young Muslim spy called Noor Inayat Khan to France. Noor was, amazingly, a pacifist and the descendant of a Sufi Indian Warrior Prince and she was taught never to lie: hardly the most promising of attribute for a spy. Kieffer begins to dig and, before long, it appears that it is he who is interrogating Vera. However, soon we learn that nothing is quite what it seems and Vera has been using a clever technique to trick her opponent into revealing what he knows…

Constructed using agonising flashbacks that reveal Noor’s struggles with the sadistic Keiffer and her attempts to escape, The Judas Tell explores the dark secrets and the terrible reality of war.