This historical novel features the true story of Gen. René Carmille, “the world’s first ethical hacker,” who saved thousands of French Jews from Hitler’s Final Solution.

Carmille is just one of the many historical figures in this World War II tale. The fictional protagonists are Miriam Meijer, a Dutch Jew, and her eventual lover and husband, Charles Delmand (aka Charles Secœur). Miriam is in Paris when her family perishes during the destruction of Rotterdam. Charles, who is with the Resistance, arranges a new identity—Miriam Dupré—and gets her a job at the Military Recruitment Service in Lyon. Her formidable talents lead to her working directly with Carmille. This is highly classified work—right under the noses of Nazi agents and associates. The question of whom to trust runs through the story like a leitmotif. Everyone knows that the Vichy government is a bad joke that eagerly collaborates with the Nazis. But to round up Jews, the Nazis need to correctly identify them. Carmille has engineered a way to sabotage the IBM punch cards that are used. The hacking and the deliberate stalling are successful. But later, Miriam, having killed a Gestapo officer, is on the run. She and Charles ultimately reunite while Carmille is arrested and tortured by the infamous Klaus Barbie. Harshbarger has a riveting story to relate, and he tells the tale superbly. Miriam—who narrates most of the chapters—is well drawn and braver than she thinks. Charles leads his double life with aplomb. As Delmand, he is a Times of London journalist; as Secœur, he is a French art consultant. How the punch card hacking works, the German occupiers’ arrogance, the daily anxiety that the Jews feel—all of this comes across very convincingly. During moments of heightened drama, the author deftly uses the brevitas trope. At one point, Miriam’s friend Simone has just seen a Jew killed by a German soldier and recounts her reaction: “ ‘Bit my fist till the soldier was out of sight. Then I ran. Through alleys. To the hotel.’ Simone burst into tears. She put her hands over her face. ‘I escaped from Warsaw,’ she sobbed. ‘My family’s there. Trapped.’ ” The useful backmatter bolsters the history and clearly shows that IBM’s complicity with the Third Reich was amoral at best, monstrous at worst.

A vivid, dramatic, and believable tale of a courageous and self-effacing war hero.