The Budapest Protocol

 
I've just finished this novel, set in Hungary - it begins as the Second World War is approaching its end; the Russians are on the outskirts of Budapest, the SS still control the city - with the support of the Hungarian Fascist Arrow Cross organisation. The remaining jews are crammed into the city's Ghetto, with barely enough food to even starve on. One Jew, a former business man, who's city and country houses have been taken over by the Germans or their Hungarian allies, has managed to get employment at the Savoy Hotel, where the Head Waiter is a former servant of the family. This has given him a pass, signed by an SS officer, which allows him to travel out from the Ghetto, to work as a waiter for the lavish dinners enjoyed by the Nazis and their visitors from Berlin and Zurich. There he meets Adolf Eichmann. 
The narrative then moves forward to The Present - although it is a present which is just a few years ahead of now. The first elections are being held for the newly created post of President of Europe, part of the consolidation process towards uniting the member countries even more closely than they are in our oresent day. The election is being spread over a few months, with each Member State holding its in turn, beginning in Budapest/
Right wing political parties are increasing their power in Mittel Europa, where the fracturing of society in a post-communist world, enables them seize the initiative in many areas of life - opposing immigration and demanding that Europe be a Christian Union, identifying Muslim Terrorists as the enemy, and their indigenous Romany as the primary source of crime and social ills; their message is, reduce and eliminate the 'Roma Problem' and everything in the garden will be lovely.
In this near future, the principal character is the grandson of the Jewish waiter from wartime; a half-English journalist who works for an English-language daily newspaper, The Budapest News, Alex Farkas has witnessed ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and senses that something very similar is happening now - attacks on the Roma people are going beyond the level of the past and are being co-ordinated and claim is made to justify them by citing a bombing campaign throughout Europe by a group calling itself The Immigration Liberation Army - but one of Alex's maxims when investigating civil unrest is to ask himself"who benefits?"
This is an exciting read, largely inspired by the American Red House Report which, just after WWII ended, showed how the Nazi Party and the SS planned to go underground when Germany lost the war and begin to work again towards their aim of uniting Europe under their own control through building up their control of Industry, Communications, and the Financial power which would enable them to de-value the different national currencies and bring all of the nation states together as one political entity, with a single currency. Sounds familiar. A real page-turner.
*****