With the Axis in its death throes, Japan pleads with Germany for help to defeat their mutual enemy, the United States. Adolf Hitler approves a secret plan, code-named Kondor, for a U-boat to deliver biological weapons developed in Nazi labs to Japan for use against American forces. In exchange the Japanese promise to send Hitler gold bullion which the Reich needs in order to mount a final stand against the Allies.
Kapitänleutnant Horst Bekker, the German Navy's top U-boat skipper, receives orders to undertake the mission to Japan. Bekker, a battered and cynical survivor of the U-boat wars, mourns his wife and daughter killed in a Berlin air raid and is haunted by guilt over their deaths and his survival. He agonizes over issues of loyalty and duty to a Führer and a regime he despises. He questions the morality of a scheme to help the Japanese win the war by killing millions with virulent strains of anthrax and plague. Yet even though he knows the chances of surviving the voyage to Japan are slim, he and his loyal crew depart on the mission.
When the Americans and British discover the Nazis' plan, they order an Allied task force into the North
Atlantic to find and destroy Bekker's U-boat and its deadly cargo. Their task becomes ever more urgent when the Americans learn that a Soviet mole has penetrated the highest levels of Britain's MI-6. Suddenly the Allies are in a race to keep the U-boat's cargo from falling into Soviet hands.
Employing stealth and deception, Bekker and his crew escape a series of undersea engagements with Allied and Soviet forces. Fighting for survival, Bekker must decide whether to carry out Hitler's orders and prolong the war, or consign the Reich's weapons of mass death to the North Atlantic deep. His decision could alter the course of history.