Phantom Wires: A Novel

An impoverished electrical expert named Durkin drifts through Mediterranean ports, recalling a past in which he left a woman in a Paris pension while seeking work. He accepts sporadic jobs repairing machinery and a yacht generator, and while aboard he overhears a cluster of influential men and a mysterious reader enumerating papers taken from a safe. That overhearing draws him into a widening web of covert dealings, wireless messages, and wartime intrigues that test his loyalties and conscience. The plot interweaves technical detail with moral dilemmas as personal desperation, clandestine forces, and human impulsiveness produce betrayal, sacrifice, and an outcome revisited in a later epilogue.