The Echelon Vendetta
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
A highly original and chillingly suspenseful journey through the darkest alleys of international espionage.
Micah Dalton isn't paid to ask questions. He's a "cleaner," a CIA fixer sent in to mop up the mess when an agent or situation goes bad. But when his close friend and colleague Porter Naumann turns up dead in an idyllic hill town in Tuscany, victim of an apparent suicide, Dalton's curiosity gets the best of him.
Other hard-nosed ex-CIA field men are found butchered across the globe and Dalton soon finds himself on the trail of a sadistic killer, who has a penchant for intricate knifework and Native American mysticism. The murders appear to be acts of retribution, but for what? The only link between the victims seems to be a global surveillance operation called Echelon.
Dalton's search for answers takes him from the fog-shrouded mazes of Venice to the beautiful big-sky country of the American West. At every turn he comes one step closer to discovering the truth behind the truth, a conspiracy so closely guarded that even suspecting it exists could prove fatal.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Somebody is killing the former CIA agents who took part in a brilliant but highly illegal top secret operation known as Echelon. A couple of ghosts may also be involved, real or imagined, but they don't interfere with the credibility or the sustained excitement of the pseudonymous Stone's debut thriller. His hero, Micah Dalton, is a "cleaner" a special operative sent in under cover to make sure no agency dirt gets into the public air. When his friend and colleague, Porter Naumann, is found savagely slaughtered in a Tuscany hotel, Micah tries to find out what happened. Cool and endlessly resourceful, the likable Micah does whatever it takes to clean up the mess. Also memorable are a shrewd Italian policeman, who can tell when something isn't kosher, and Micah's immediate boss, Jack Stallworth, "a short, sharp, bullet-headed hard-nosed razorback hog with all the languid charm of a quick knee to the jaw." The author, who has served in the military and been an intelligence officer, clearly knows his way around the higher levels of official treachery. 75,000 printing.
