The Wireless Operator

by David Tuch

ISBN: 9781837732456

Published: 2025-10-21

Government agencies and rival factions were closing in. His look-alike had already fallen victim to professional hitmen and his once-powerful allies in Cuban intelligence and the DEA could no longer guarantee his safety. How did a boy from Manchester revolutionize the criminal world and become the largest marijuana trafficker in history? This is the never-before-told story of Harold Derber, the debonair British Merchant Navy veteran who invented the modern drug trade with his groundbreaking invention: the drug mothership. Through his ghost fleet of drug ships, Derber eventually become the chief supplier of marijuana to post-war America. This gripping true tale follows Derber from humble beginnings in Manchester, England to his assassination in the sun-kissed streets of Miami. Along the way, Derber's story takes in some of the most significant events of the twentieth century - the Second World War's Battle of the Atlantic, the Cuban Revolution and the murky shadows of the Cold War....