February, 1942. Free China is lost, the Battle of Britain has been fought and Hitler dines in Paris. World War II is nearly three years old, however the United States resists involvement. With an invitation from the Imperial Japanese Navy at Pearl Harbor everything changes.
In her first ten months of the war nearly 500 American ships are lost. The retooling of Her factories is estimated to take at least a year, and even before it is completed, the men who work in those factories must become Marines, sailors and soldiers.
The U.S. Navy is behind the eight ball, big time. They need help. To compound their problems, the most famous luxury liner in the world, T. L. S. Normandie, has just been set alight and burned to the water-line in New York Harbor initiating wide spread hysteria in fear of German saboteurs. All originating from a misguided sense of desperation, and a well planned feign.
Meanwhile, "The Boss of Bosses", Lucky Luciano at age 45, is serving a thirty to fifty year sentence in a maximum security prison in upstate New York.
In one of the most ironic decisions of the war, the Federal Government requests the founder of organized crime, Lucky Luciano, to join forces with America's most secret service, Naval Intelligence. Luciano, has been sentenced to life in prison for a crime that warrants ten years, and is concurrently fighting deportation to an enemy nation where he will certainly be put to death, when he is asked to help the government who condemned him. In addition, he is told he must remain in prison with no chance for compensation or parole.
Mike 'Doc' McKeowen, a New York P. I., leads us through the story.
Doc just wants to get his life back on track after his business partner ran off with all the top clients, and a long and painful divorce drained him of his house, his family and his dignity. Fate may have a plan for Doc, but he can't figure out what the hell it is.
Whether you believe the link between the Federal Government and organized crime is a slender thread, or as Mario Puzo wrote, '. . . contemporary America, where law and organized crime are one and the same.', you will learn how the foundation of the international drug cartel was laid. You will come to appreciate the saying, 'Due Facce della stessa Medaliglia'. Crime and politics, two sides of the same coin.
Titanic was an act of carelessness.
Lusitania was an act of war.
Normandie was an act of genius.
