The Phantom Train

From Gary J. Rose, bestselling author of Hitting Rock Bottom, comes a contemporary historical thriller inspired by the billions in gold, art, jewelry, and other treasures looted by the Nazis during World War II—and the staggering amount that remains missing today.

When FBI agent Jeannie Loomis investigates the brutal murders of a mother and her teenage daughter, the trail leads to the San Francisco home of Franz Detwrick, a recently deceased former Waffen-SS officer who served at Sobibor. Hidden behind a wall, Jeannie and her partner, Ismail Flores, discover Detwrick’s private Nazi shrine: stolen paintings, gold bars, gemstones, human teeth filled with gold—and a coded diary pointing toward one of Hitler’s legendary Phantom Trains.

During the final days of the Third Reich, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring entrusted Detwrick with concealing an armored train loaded with treasure stolen from museums, churches, governments, and Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Detwrick buried the train inside an Austrian mountain, murdered the prisoners who built the tunnel, and carried its location to his grave.

Working with Mossad, Jeannie and Ismail race to decipher Detwrick’s diary before a powerful modern-day Nazi organization can recover the treasure and use it to finance a new extremist movement. Their investigation becomes increasingly deadly as assassins attack the FBI team, trusted agents are exposed as traitors, and Jeannie discovers that the conspiracy reaches inside her own Bureau.

The search ultimately leads into the Austrian Alps, where the legendary train—and enough stolen wealth to alter the balance of power—may still be waiting behind a sealed mountain passage. But reaching it first is only the beginning. Jeannie must survive betrayal from within her own operation and prevent Hitler’s stolen fortune from becoming the foundation of a new Reich.

Blending a modern FBI investigation with the haunting legacy of the Holocaust, The Phantom Train is a suspenseful international thriller about stolen history, buried guilt, and the dangerous people still determined to profit from both. Adapted from Gary J. Rose’s novel, the screenplay combines historical mystery, procedural suspense, emotional stakes, and a cinematic race across two continents.