"Spellbinding political espionage thriller that's a blockbuster."
Reviewed by Tanzey Cutter
Posted May 6, 2006
Thriller Techno | Thriller Political
During his long and legendary tenure with the CIA, Jay Tice
was the best intelligence operator in the world -- the last
great spymaster. Then during the latter part of the Cold
War, it was discovered he was also a traitor who sold
secrets to the enemy. Now, he's serving a life sentence in
a federal maximum security prison from which no one has
escaped -- until now. When it's discovered one morning that
his cell is empty and he's disappeared without a trace, the
hunt is on. CIA Agent Elaine Cunningham, a highly gifted "hunter" who's
had some personal problems since her husband's death, is
given another chance to redeem herself with the hush-hush
assignment of locating Tice before the world finds out he's
missing. But things go from bad to worse as the intricate
trail she follows leads to deception and death. Elaine
uncovers some very dangerous secrets and conspiracies as
she tries to keep one step ahead of those who want Tice,
and now her, dead. Eventually, Tice and Elaine meet. As he works to convince
her to help his cause, rather than turn him over to
authorities, neither of them is sure who they can trust
anymore. The web of past and present deceit and espionage
becomes more entangled with each step they take toward the
final outcome. Wow! Gayle Lynds has written an exciting, compelling
and
totally spellbinding political espionage thriller of global
proportions. Each page brought new twists and turns and
surprises, and I could not put it down. Lynds' talent for
research and intricate details is exemplary as she brings a
huge cast of characters and diverse and varied settings
alive. This should be a summer blockbuster!
SUMMARY
Charles "Jay" Tice was a spy's spy. The chief of the CIA's
elite Clandestine Services, he was a legend throughout the
world of international intelligence. But secretly he was
also a traitor, reputedly selling information that will
seriously compromise the security of the United States for
decades to come. Since his treachery was exposed, Tice has
been kept under strict surveillance in a maximum security
prison. Then one morning, his cell is discovered empty. Jay Tice
has vanished - without tripping an alarm or leaving any
trace of his passing. Elaine Cunningham is a hunter - a CIA operative who
specializes in finding people who don't want to be found.
Young, gifted and a maverick, she is assigned to track Tice
and bring him to ground before he disappears forever. But
as she matches wits in a perilous game with one of the
greatest spymasters of all time, she discovers there is far
more at stake than an old spy's last run for freedom. Lurking in the shadows are other hidden players with their
own lethal agendas and, from Geneva to Washington, Berlin
to New York City, a deadly conspiracy is coalescing. With
only a few hours to go, and the future of millions in the
balance, she must uncover the truth behind the legend of
the last spymaster.
ExcerptPart OneI grew accustomed to walking on a knife’s edge and could
imagine no other life. — Soviet General Dmitri Polyakov
For eighteen years, he was a U.S. mole code-named Tophat,
until Soviet mole Robert Hanssen betrayed him. Chapter 1 April 2005 Chaux de Mont, Switzerland All days should be like this. All moments. Gerhard Shoutens
hurtled down an expert ski run that paralleled a razorback
ridge, following his friend Kristoph Maas. Sunlight drenched
the snow-mantled Alps, and the wide sky was a vault of
sapphire blue. Gerhard reveled in the soaring exhilaration of speeding
through the crisp new powder. “Das ist Wahnsinn!” he shouted
into the wind. Kristoph whooped in agreement. “Super! Toll!” They flashed through a hushed stand of pines and into an
open area, their velocity increasing, their skis hissing as
the trail took them along the winding rim of a couloir. On
one side spread a slope of pristine snow. Gerhard glanced
down the other—a spectacular gorge so deep that house-size
boulders at the bottom appeared to be mere pebbles. It was
breathtaking. “Sieh dir das mal an!” he yelled. But before his friend could admire the view, his entire body
seemed to recoil as if he had struck some obstacle hidden in
the snow. He gave an outraged bellow, his skis lifted off
the track, and he was airborne. Gerhard leaned low into his
skis, frantically trying to reach him. But Kristoph shot off
the edge and into the void. Two days later
Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex
Allenwood, Pennsylvania At 6:40 a.m., ten minutes past morning call at the crowded
federal penitentiary in the Susquehanna Valley, a stranger
in civilian clothes marched down a gray cellblock, staring
straight ahead. A Bureau of Prisons lieutenant led; two
guards followed. All looked uneasy. The man paused at a cell. As soon as the door opened, he
moved inside and glared down at the solitary cot. The
blanket had been yanked aside to reveal blue prison trousers
and shirt stuffed with crumpled newspapers and arranged to
mimic a man lying on his side. There was also a fake wood
arm covered with flesh-colored upholstery from the prison
factory. With the pillow pounded high as if it covered a
head, and the blanket on top exposing part of the arm, not
even the obligatory flash of a guard’s light during
nighttime checks would reveal that no one slept there. “Clever bastard.” The stranger jerked a cell phone from his
pocket. He punched in a number and kept his voice low: “He’s
gone all right. I’m in his cell now. I’ll—” “Seal it off,” the voice on the other end of the line
ordered. “No one’s to search it, understand? And for God’s
sake, make sure no one tells the press that Jay Tice has
escaped!” Langley, Virginia At 9:06 a.m. Laurence Litchfield, the CIA’s Deputy Director
of Operations—the DDO— hand-carried a sealed white envelope
down from the seventh floor to the Staff Operations Center,
the SOC, which was responsible for case-management support
to colleagues in the field. In his mid-forties, Litchfield
was lean, with a runner’s wiry body and a lanky gait. His
eyes were carved deep into his face. Above them, wide brows
formed an inkblack line across his forehead. The SOC chief looked up from her desk. “Good morning, Mr.
Litchfield. We got some overnight requests from our people
in Yemen and Qatar. I was going to memo you about our
progress with the intelligence summit, but I can fill you in
now.” “First I need to talk to one of your people—Elaine Cunningham.” She noted the envelope in his hand. “Cunningham? You know
she’s sidelined.” “I know. Show me where she is.” She nodded and led him out the door and down two long
corridors and into a room crammed with gray modular
cubicles, which someone long ago had cynically dubbed the
Parking Lot. Here a glacially changing landscape of some
three dozen field officers waited like used cars collecting
dust, futures uncertain. Their covers had been irrevocably
blown, or they had proved inept, or they had run into
Langley politics. For many, the next stop was the tedium of
personnel or recruitment or curriculum—or, worst case,
dismissal. The chief pointed out Cunningham’s cubicle among
the maze, and Litchfield thanked her. “Go up to my office.
I’ll meet you there.” She left, and he turned down the narrow aisle and found
Elaine Cunningham in her cramped enclosure, marching back
and forth beside her desk, arms crossed, her shoulder
propping her phone against her ear as she talked quietly
into it. She was a small woman, twenty-nine years old and
blond, dressed in an unbuttoned black jacket, white T-shirt,
and belted black pants. As he leaned against the frame of her cubicle to study her,
she glanced up and recognized him. She winked one large blue
eye in greeting. And continued talking into the phone: “So,
your missing source is a broker in Brussels. He’s a morose
Dane, unmarried, follows soccer. He didn’t show up for a
blind date yesterday and missed the alternate meet this
morning. Now you have word he’s in the wind, and Copenhagen
can’t find him.” She pursed her lips. Her pace quickened.
“All Scandinavians tend to be stereotyped as morose, but
there are real national differences. It’s the Swedes who are
mostly angst-ridden, while the Danes are more
happy-go-lucky. So your morose Dane may actually be Swedish,
and if he’s driving home, he probably didn’t stop in
Copenhagen but took the Øresund Fixed Link across the sound
into Malmö. When amateurs change identities, they usually
create legends based on what they already know. If he’s
Swedish—especially if he comes from the Malmö area—it’s
possible he knows Copenhagen well enough to fake it as his
hometown, and if he does, it’s a good bet he speaks Danish
like a native.” Cunningham paused, listening. “My pleasure. No, this is the
end of the Langley road for me. Hey, it’s been great working
with you, too. You always give me interesting questions.” As
she hung up, she grabbed the single sheet of paper in her
printer tray. “Morning, Mr. Litchfield. This is my lucky
day. Who would’ve thought I’d get to resign to the DDO
himself. Just to make it official, here’s my letter.” Litchfield was unsurprised. “You’ll make your psychologist
happy.” He took the letter, folded it into his pocket, and
sat in the only side chair. “That’s what I’m all about—making CIA clinicians happy.” Her
smile did not involve her eyes. “I suspect you don’t really want to quit. People who excel
seldom do.” As Litchfield continued to watch, she blinked then sank into
her desk chair. Dressed in her simple black and white
clothes, her hair smoothed back into a ponytail at the nape
of her neck, and wearing little makeup, she could pass as a
cop or the leader of a gang of thieves. This flexibility of
affect would be easier for her than for some, because she
was neither beautiful nor ugly. Still, she was pretty enough
that she could use her looks: Her face was slender, her
cheekbones good, her classic features slightly irregular,
and her golden hair shone. Litchfield had studied her file.
Now he had seen her. So far, she was perfect. “What you say has a certain truth to it,” she acknowledged.
“But I’ve also heard it said that a rut is just like a
grave—only longer. I’m in a rut. I’m not doing Langley any
good, and I’m not doing myself any good. It’s time to get on
with my life, such as it is.” She gazed at the white
envelope in his hand then peered up at him curiously. “But I
think you have something else in mind.” He inclined his head. “I have a job tailored to your talents
. . . and to your limitations. To do it, you’ll be in the
field alone, which you seem to prefer anyway.” “Not necessarily. It’s just that the bodies Langley kept
sending to partner with me turned out to be less than stellar.” “You don’t trust anyone, do you?” “My mother. I’m fond of my mother. I trust her.
Unfortunately, she lives far away, in California.” “You trusted your husband, too. But he’s dead. Afghanistan,
right?” For a moment she appeared speechless. She seemed to shrink,
grow calcified, as hard as a tombstone. He pushed her again: “You’ve had a problem working with
people since he died. Your psychologist has recommended
Langley let you go.” Instead of exploding, she nodded. Her expression was grim. “You were one of our best hunters,” Litchfield said. “Right
now, I need the best.” As a hunter, her specialty was
locating missing spies, assets gone to ground, “lost”
foreign agents, anyone in the covert world of interest to
Langley who had vanished—and doing it in such a way that the
public never knew. He watched a reflective look cross her face. It was time to
change the subject: “Why do you think you were so successful?” “Probably because I simply have a knack for it,” she said.
“I steep myself in the psychology of my target until the
physical evidence and clues take on new meaning. That’s all
there is to it.” For the first time, he smiled. “No, there’s far more than
that.” She was modest, and she had not lost her temper. All
things considered, she was clearly his best choice. Eyeing
him speculatively, she said, “When the DDO comes to call, I
figure something important has happened. And when I’m on the
verge of being fired and he still comes to call, I figure it
could be crucial. So let me help you out—if you think I can
do the job, tell me what it is, and I’ll tell you whether I
can or want to take it on.” He looked around. “Not here. The assignment is with one of
our special units. And it’s M-classified.” “M” indicated an
extraordinarily sensitive covert operation. Among the
highest the United States bestowed, single-letter security
clearances meant the information was so secret it could be
referred to only by initials. Her blue eyes snapped with excitement. It had been a long
time since she’d had such an opportunity. “Give me back my
resignation letter. As long as I don’t have to mommy fools,
I’ll deliver.” He handed it to her along with his envelope. “Here’s the
address and the name of your contact, plus my phone number.
It’s the usual protocol—you hunt, our regular people
capture. Read, memorize, then shred everything, including my
number. Good luck.” The Catoctin Mountains, Maryland Dense forests flowed dark and primeval down the ridged sides
of the Maryland mountains to where a roadside stop had been
built on a green basin of land off busy Highway 15. A cool
breeze typical of the early hour at this time of year blew
around the two-pump gas station and parking lot and café. Jay Tice stood utterly still in shadows. His bloody clothes
announced he should be considered dangerous, but there was
something else about him that was perhaps even more
sinister: It was in his aging face, where intelligence and
violence warred just beneath the skin. His hair was short,
the color of iron shavings. Two crevices curved down from
either side of his nose to his mouth. His chin was as firm
as ever, marked by the dramatic cleft. He moved off through the trees. At the rear of the cafŽ, he
dropped to his haunches. There were four windows on the back
wall—one was opaque glass, two displayed customers eating,
and the fourth, next to the doorway, showed a desk and file
cabinets. That was the office, just where he remembered. The
back door was open. From it drifted the greasy odors of
fried sausage and bacon. Tice looked around, then sprinted
to the doorway. He peered cautiously inside. “Two eggs, easy!” A voice yelled from the end of the
cluttered hall. “Half stack!” Within seconds he slipped
unnoticed into the office. He locked the door and activated
the computer and, while it booted up, opened the window.
From somewhere inside the café, a newscast described a
terrorist bombing by a group thought to be connected to al-
Qaeda. He sat down at the computer and created a new Yahoo!
e-mail account from which he opened a blank e-mail,
addressed it, and typed into the message window: Dog’s run
away. Call home. As soon as he hit send, he addressed another e-mail with a
different message: Unexpected storm forced evacuation. In
touch soon. Deleting all copies saved to the computer, he turned it off.
He slid out the window, stifling a groan as his hip grazed
the lip, furious that he was not as agile as he once was. He
closed the window and seconds later was in the forest again,
moving swiftly away.
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