Himal Gold

Book excerpt: In 1953, English journalist Graham Peters is sent to Nepal to cover the attempt to conquer Mt Everest. Kathmandu is full of foreigners, including two textile merchants, who upon reading of the successful ascent – and the New Zealander who had “knocked the bastard off” – do some exploring of their own. Unfamiliar with the area, they misread their map and get lost. Stumbling through a valley, they find fragments of wreckage from a crashed plane, a German cargo plane. In hospital they are visited by Peters, who sees their hapless story as a good background piece for his Mt Everest article. During the interview, they describe the wreckage they had found. The article is published around the world, and is of interest to a lot of people, none more so than the German SS officer who led a Tibetan exploration team in 1938. Now living in Argentina, Kraus (aka Richard Smyth) sees this as his opportunity to regain the plundered treasure of Nazi gold that was lost on that fateful flight. Back in England, Peters researches why a German plane may have crashed in Nepal, and begins to uncover the truth. He returns to Nepal to find the wreckage, to right the wrongs of the past, and to expose Nazi atrocities perpetrated in Tibet just prior to WWII.