Brian Finch-Malloy: school chess and fencing champion, crack shot, former officer in the British Army's Coldstream Guards, and private in the army of the Confederacy. He is now on the run from the British Secret Service, the Confederacy, and from Hermann Goering of the German National Socialist Workers' Party. Working with a group of Confederates and Germans, he must find a way to prevent an unholy alliance between President Jefferson Davis III's Confederate States of America and Adolf Hitler's Germany. David Slater: private in the Army of the Confederacy, with talents for chess and calligraphy, both of which take him on unexpected adventures; to Germany, and in the Zeppelin Bismarck, where he meets Hitler, Goering, and other Nazi functionaries. Beneath Gray Skies tells of a past that never happened, where the Confederacy survived into the 20th century, and a giant airship soars through the air, carrying a fabulous and mysterious treasure across the Atlantic.