Little, Brown Book Group

The Spider Covenant - Brian Klein

On 10 August 1944, with Germany on the verge of a crushing and humiliating defeat, Heinrich Himmler, the second most powerful Nazi and head of the notorious SS, holds a clandestine meeting in Strasbourg, with a handful of elite industrialists and bankers. A covert organisation is born, codenamed 'Die Spinne' - The Spider. The network is tasked with helping senior SS officers escape the clutches of advancing allied forces. New identities are created, bankrolled by illicit funds, allowing notorious criminals to begin new lives in Europe and South America. Many of them land key roles in the worlds of politics, banking and industry. Decades later, they're able to pass on a privileged and influential birth right to their descendants. Himmler's secret lovechild, Amelie, is also spirited out of Germany by 'Die ,armed with a Nazi nest egg of fifty million dollars. Eighty years on, Amelie's adopted son becomes the head of the Spider network, which has evolved, survived and prospered over the decades under a cloak of secrecy. Employing a level of AI technology years ahead of anything currently known, the Spider network operates a secret facility based in Strasbourg, capable of creating undetectable Deepfakes of their own extremist politicians: perfect avatars, capable of conducting live interviews on a video stream with any news outlet in the world. The computer 'brain' of the Deepfakes is linked to state-of-the-art AI machines, programmed to create the perfect politician, spouting extreme right-wing rhetoric, aimed at winning over the masses. At a time of world disorder, with bitter wars across and the Middle East, the leaders of the Spider network look to seize their opportunity of grabbing control of the levers of political power.

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