Excerpt: The Prague Connection

TPC 200x300 1Sturm and the Russians were standing by the refreshments, drinking coffee and chatting in the basement intelligence center before the meeting started. The previous day’s snacks had been replaced with international pastries in glass-topped cake stands: Belgian craquelin brioche, Danish kanelbulle, Lisbon tarts, Italian pasticciotto, and American cornbread. Brandt scanned the offerings, then touched his squishy middle and turned away.

After introductions, Lena Averin smiled and walked up to Brandt. “In those jeans and black turtleneck, you remind me of Steve Jobs. I met him at a Zurich conference. An interesting man.”

“I liked his style, simple and effective. Eliminates wardrobe worry,” replied Brandt. “Unfortunately, I’m dumber and a lot poorer.”

“But you’re taller. And your blue eyes sparkle more than his brown.”

“Wouldn’t know. Steve and I never met.”

Her smile turned sultry. “The curl around your ears is engaging. Very tempting to women.”

Lena was becoming scary. “So I’ve been told.”

Her hair was a statement. Forget the PhD. A playful look for a professor, a deep red French ombre that gave way to blonde ends styled in a twisted, tangled, layered look. She favored black jeans with expensive labels that could have been specially tailored for her Playmate curves. A classic white shirt with corset-style lacing at the waist emphasized her bust. Metallic silver high-fashion sneakers bred in Paris. A short Versace scarf tied close to her neck that matched her gray-blue eyes finished the look—edgy, sexy, like a supermodel who could explain quantum theory.

“I like turtlenecks on men. It’s a virile, confident look.” Her tongue slid along her lower lip.

“It’s all I wear. My sister says I’m compensating for a long list of inadequacies.”

“I bet you drive a Porsche.”

“Uber mostly. But there’s a ten-year-old Saab that balks at starting and a Land Rover the agency loans me for missions.”

Moky spoke up. “Anti-Russian missions, I believe.”

While Brandt’s tone carried the bass of a TV news anchor, Moky’s voice was the high side of midrange, harsh, brassy, harpy-like. He tried to hide a scowl that was building under a forced smile over Lena’s flirting. “Moscow graciously allowed NATO to bring you in to be our guide and cover.”

“And to help us with the locks,” Lena said.

Brandt tried to hold back his surprise. Locks on nukes again? Neither Deke nor Grayson had mentioned that his training and experience would be needed. Locks on nuclear weapons were what got him dragged into the CIA initially. Keeping the nuclear arsenal safe from jihadists, anarchists, and nutjobs who believed a few mushroom clouds could fix everything was his Army job. He left that all behind when he and Anne moved to the Bay Area and opened the travel business. After Anne’s death, Deke had convinced him to be the bait to locate a missing warhead with the lock still on. The Bosniaks who had the weapon never forgave him for destroying their plan and were still out for revenge.

Deke shifted his weight as if standing at attention. “Brandt solves two problems. We need an expert travel guide to keep the locals from asking questions . . . one who can be discreet and who knows the devices. He might be a little rusty with locks, but he’ll get the job done.”

Lena’s head wobbled approval. “I’m sure he will.”

Lena had an earthiness that gave her intelligence a stylized, sensual quality. Brandt could imagine her starting a party in a garden shed or attending a Lincoln Center gala, but he wasn’t so confident about the locks. The twenty-plus years that had passed convinced him if they needed his help with a lock, they were in trouble. He had forgotten what a SADM lock even looked like.

As everyone sat down, Deke asked Moky, “Major, how did all this happen?”

Moky attempted to minimize the dilemma. “Moscow considers it an inventory problem. Thankfully, Lena has the information to correct it. Originally, they stored them from Estonia to the Ukraine. With perestroika, a few anti-reform KGB sensed the end coming and began gathering them up.” He paused as if uncertain how much to divulge, then turned toward Gleb, who pretended not to notice. “Those that were not returned to Russia, we believe were hidden by these criminals among our satellite friends.”

Brandt thought Gleb was the one to worry about. Russia dominated Olympic wrestling, and Gleb looked part of the team. He had a barrel chest, and his shoulder muscles made his neck disappear. His murky gray eyes were like a cobra’s, ominous from birth. He soaked up every word as if prying into the team’s private thoughts like a determined shrink. He had yet to utter a word, satisfied to let Moky grapple with the Americans.

“What’s with the locks?” Brandt said.

Lena did an about-face. The playgirl professor was gone. Mensa scientist took her place. “We need to know if these weapons have been compromised and are capable of detonation. I have an instrument to measure the tritium level, so we’ll learn if it’s been replaced. The locks need to come off for the gauge to work. If it’s been refreshed, then Petrov has been able to remove the locks and rearm the weapons. I’m sure you understand what that could mean.”

Brandt did. Small, armed backpack nukes in the hands of the son of a KGB superpatriot could disturb sleep world leaders’ sleep for a long time. The urgency of the Russians that led them to ask for help made sense.

“Since the locks are copies of the ones your Army uses, new security will have to be installed for transport back to Russia,” Moky said.

There was something peculiar in his face that Brandt couldn’t identify.

Gleb bent down and lifted a box. The dark stubble on his unshaven face spread across the top of his plain head like a burr. He extracted a three-inch-long cylinder with a combination dial at one end. “These are the replacements,”

The man can speak, thought Brandt. If pit bulls could talk, they would sound like Gleb“You have the combination for the old locks, right?”

Moky shifted his eyes away. “Moscow is working on that.”

Brandt reached toward the cylinder. “May I?”

“Of course.”

The SADM locks began to come back to him. The replacement lock in his hand was bigger than he remembered. He twisted the dial, testing its specificity, looking for clear, obvious clicks on numbers. It was like a spinning wheel, no obvious clicks making it very difficult to pick. He looked for the small slot where a lockpick tool might be inserted but failed to find one. The Russians weren’t taking any chances with the new locks. Without the combination, no lockpicking, no entry.

“What about Petrov?” Deke asked. “Have you found him?”

“We believe he’s still here in Europe,” Moky said.

Tig looked around the table. “I dunno. We look like a bunch of spies complete with a decoy.”

“Don’t worry about that. There’ll be one more on the team tomorrow,” Sturm said. “He’ll make a difference.”

***

Midmorning, they walked out to a landscaped courtyard to escape the dismal confinement of the basement for some sunlight. A coffee bar allowed access from a patio. NATO staff personnel sat on benches underneath Japanese maple and kousa dogwoods. Moky lit a cigarette.

Lena grabbed Brandt by the arm and pulled him out of range of the others, the flourish to her walk seductive, her face evasive. In a nightclub, she could pass for an arousing twenty-six; in a physics lab, a white-coated professor of thirty-nine. She handed him a lighter for her cigarette. Unlike creamy-skinned Russian women, Lena was tan, beach tan, typical of oligarch wives and mistresses. Brandt lit her cigarette and watched her exhale toward a budding maple, then smile.

“Please forgive my flirtation. I don’t mean to be taken serious. Moky and I have an unfortunate history. I don’t want him thinking it can be renewed. I thought if I showed an interest in you, he would realize he has no place in my life. I’m afraid I went too far. Please forgive me.”

“So I’m not virile and confident?”

“Of course you are, but I haven’t slept with you, and I made the mistake of sleeping with him when I was young and foolish.”

“I’ll bet vodka was involved.”

“Sober would not have been possible.”

“Not a great start for a collaborative mission.”

Lena shrugged. “We’re Russians. We do things differently.”

“That’s what the French say.”

“Your man Tig, is he military?”

“Something like that.”

“I don’t think he and Gleb will get along.”

A buzzer sounded, and office staff lined up at the doors to return to their cell-like cubicles—proof that Pavlov was on to something. Moky kept glancing toward Lena as she smoked and talked with Brandt. Finally, he stuffed his cigarette in a container, glared at Brandt with brutish insecurity, and stomped back inside. Brandt noticed the parts of Moky’s face that caught his attention earlier. Along with a stout chin at the end of a firm jaw and a forehead that sloped like a ramp, Moky had an eye bulging out of a smaller socket, making it look oversized, like the eye on a Muppet.

The discussion resumed with a roadblock, a big one for NATO. Moky wanted to bring in Russian trucks as soon as the weapons were found, without waiting for the civilian-disguised NATO escort. “Since they belonged to the Russian people, they should be under Russian control,” he argued. Grayson refused. The bickering continued through a working lunch of baguette sandwiches and puff pastries.

Brandt let his attention drift through lunch while they argued. He saw the squabble from a different angle, like two kids with hickory sticks banging at a piñata to see who would be first to the prizes. How would two countries who were satisfied to be in constant conflict come together for a common goal with nuclear weapons at stake? An unnatural coupling of interests, like one of his sister’s therapy groups. Gleb and Tig were warriors, too much alike to put competition aside. Grayson and Moky would be good at pretending to cooperate. When trouble with one of the host nations arose, a test would come. Lena . . . well, Lena was Lena. Too intelligent to be called free spirited, with a vein flowing with indifference and a frivolous past she was trying to leave behind. He had the sense that politics bored her. She was both above it and below it. A complicated woman. Yet he grasped something below the surface driving her. NATO credited her vigilance for discovering the threat. What had made her keep digging until she put it all together? Whatever it was brought Lena to a different level.

About his place on the team, he wasn’t certain. Babysitter, tour guide, and go-fer. Water boy seemed to fit best.

By late afternoon, Deke had had enough. Back-and-forth, ping-pong arguments that went nowhere were for political talk shows. He broke the logjam by threatening to pull out of the mission and let the host countries know there were Russian nukes inside their borders.

“I see,” Moky said with a smile cold enough to form ice. “If that’s the way it has to be, let us proceed.”

A cooling-off period was in order.

“It’s late. We can pick up again in the morning,” Sturm said.

“I’ve had enough of this basement dungeon,” Lena said. “Let’s find a café or bar.”

Grayson stood. “I know a place.”

The black Audi behind them was unnoticed all the way there.

Excerpted from The Prague Connection by Will Steadman, ©2021

Whisper of Hope

J .B. Millhollin

8 9 19 Whisper of Hope Book Cover update 1He took her hand. “Are you leaving?”

“I don’t know yet. I have a broker coming to look at the house this week. I just don’t know if I can get out from under it without losing a lot of money. I’ll know more the middle of the week.”

“If you can just break even on the house, are you still planning on leaving?”

“Yes, I am. David, I just can’t handle it here, and the last few weeks have made that even more apparent.”

“I understand.”

“I hope so, I really do. I simply cannot live in an up and down world as I would be if I stayed. I can’t drive by his grave one morning, and then have you come home to me that night. The extreme emotions of each day will not work for me. I’d rather be broke, and living away from here, than live that kind of life. Come with me. Please. If I do conclude, financially, that I can leave here, come with me. We’ll figure it out, together.”

He looked away, as he considered her response. As he turned to face her, he said, “First of all, you know how much I love you. Don’t ever question that, Hope. Maybe someday I can leave here, but not much has changed since we last discussed this. I really can’t even consider it right now. The timing is just not right. My brother needs me. I have a practice I can’t leave. I got alimony…I got…”

He hesitated, then smiled and said, “Maybe, someday…but not now, not the way things are.”

Hope looked down, released his hand, and said, “I understand.”

she stood and wiped the tears from both eyes. “I’ll let you know what’s going on. I’ll give you a call when I know what I’m doing.”

He nodded and watched as she walked away.

 

No Turning Back

BooksGoSocial

NOTURNINGBACK ART final

Writing a series is like picking up with old friends you haven’t seen in a while and catching up with their news, it’s like going to a party and seeing everyone, but you are the only one who knows everyone’s secrets. And despite No Turning Back being book 3 in a series, there are still lots of secrets surrounding the key characters that haven’t been revealed yet…

For readers following a series, reading the next book should be like picking up with old friends too, but it’s also essential that someone totally new to the party doesn’t feel left out, that they can pick up on what’s been going on. It’s vital that a new reader can enjoy No Turning Back in its own right – they may never get to read Little Bones or In Deep Water, so each book must work as a standalone.

It’s perhaps just as well that I do know my character so well, because when I sat down to write No Turning Back in January, knowing that I had a deadline in April sometime (I didn’t check the exact date, rather foolishly) I had lots of bits of plot floating around in my head but no real story.

I knew an important part of the story was about the Dark Web, I wanted to explore how technology can let intruders into our homes, often without us realizing it; and I wanted to explore relationships and what makes people act the way they do. I had Olivier and his brother and I had Tom and Lauren, and I knew what had happened to them, but not completely WHY or HOW. I also didn’t know just how hugely other people’s stories were going to impact them, and all the secrets that would be revealed. Because even perfect families have secrets…

No Turning Back was exhilarating, the first draft was written very fast, and quite a lot of it was complete nonsense, but I had all the characters in the right places, and the timeline and geography worked out. The whole point of a first draft (as I keep telling myself) is to get the story onto the page, the second draft is for finessing it, for bringing the life and colour to it and for discovering what really happened. By the time we got to the third draft, I’d made some radical changes, including a whole new and surprising ending.

I’ve discovered some fabulous characters in this book who I hope could become series characters in their own right. I adore Anna Lockharte and her niece, and we’re going to be seeing more of Eddie Flint who was a minor character in In Deep Water. I wanted to develop Cat and O’Rourke’s relationship in this book, but also to leave them with some exciting new challenges ahead, because by the end of No Turning Back, everything has changed.

Sam Blake is a pseudonym for Vanessa Fox O'Loughlin, the founder of The Inkwell Group publishing consultancy and the hugely popular national writing resources website Writing.ie. Little Bones, her debut, was shortlisted for the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards Crime Fiction Book of the Year award. Order No Turning Back at this link.

5 Great Conspiracy Thrillers

Natashia Thewes

I don’t often give a book 5 stars. That honor is reserved for the few books that truly have it all; the ones you can’t forget. A 5-star book transports you to another world, another place or time, and always leaves you craving more. Below are the five 5-star conspiracy thrillers I can’t stop thinking about.

 

 

The Girl Before: A Novel by J.P. DelaneyThe Girl Before

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the tradition of The Girl on the Train, The Silent Wife, and Gone Girl comes an enthralling psychological thriller that spins one woman’s seemingly good fortune, and another woman’s mysterious fate, through a kaleidoscope of duplicity, death, and deception.

Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life.

The request seems odd, even intrusive—and for the two women who answer, the consequences are devastating.

EMMA
Reeling from a traumatic break-in, Emma wants a new place to live. But none of the apartments she sees are affordable or feel safe. Until One Folgate Street. The house is an architectural masterpiece: a minimalist design of pale stone, plate glass, and soaring ceilings. But there are rules. The enigmatic architect who designed the house retains full control: no books, no throw pillows, no photos or clutter or personal effects of any kind. The space is intended to transform its occupant—and it does.

JANE
After a personal tragedy, Jane needs a fresh start. When she finds One Folgate Street she is instantly drawn to the space—and to its aloof but seductive creator. Moving in, Jane soon learns about the untimely death of the home’s previous tenant, a woman similar to Jane in age and appearance. As Jane tries to untangle truth from lies, she unwittingly follows the same patterns, makes the same choices, crosses paths with the same people, and experiences the same terror, as the girl before.

The Girl Before is deservedly anointed the ‘top girl’ of this season’s suspense novels.”—The Washington Post 

 

CypherGhost by DS KaneCypherGhost

The seventh book in the gripping technothriller series, Spies Lie, perfect for fans who love Robert Ludlum, Lee Child, and Barry Eisler.

She is a CypherGhost: An untraceable hacker, someone who can be anywhere and do anything using a computer. Can an aircraft be hacked? Can a human being be hacked? Don't be so sure…

When Ann Silbey Sashakovich enters Stanford University to study computer forensics, she gets far more than she expected. During the Thanksgiving holiday of her freshman year, Ann finds that the aircraft she is a passenger on has been hacked. Its engines have stopped and everyone aboard is screaming.

When Charlette De Spain's boyfriend is falsely accused of stealing secrets from the FBI and dies in prison under mysterious circumstance, it changes her life. Once an Art History major, now a budding computer hacker, Charlette gathers the proof that her boyfriend was innocent. When no one pays attention, she decides to become jury and executioner for all those responsible.

However, the aircraft carrying one of Charlette’s primary targets also carries Ann.

In an America whose government is silently at war with its hackers, who prevails and who fails isn't limited to the two young battling women, but might also involve the fate of the entire nation.

“DS Kane, without a doubt, is a great storyteller… a highly recommended read for the lovers of popular thrillers”. —Mystery Tribune

 

Into The Water by Paula HawkinsInto The Water

 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER – An addictive new novel of psychological suspense from the author of #1 New York Times bestseller and global phenomenon The Girl on the Train.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.

Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she'd never return.

With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.

Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.

“Hawkins is at the forefront of a group of female authors – think Gillian Flynn and Megan Abbott – who have reinvigorated the literary suspense novel by tapping a rich vein of psychological menace and social unease… there’s a certain solace to a dark escape, in the promise of submerged truths coming to light.” —Vogue

 

Beyond the Red Carpet by Debbra LynnBeyond The Red Carpet

A Masterful Hollywood Mystery that is sure to grip any reader and keep them thoroughly guessing until the end.

Sophia Donovan has it all: a beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills, a successful career at a high-profile celebrity magazine, amazing friends, and she is married to one of the hottest Hollywood Directors of the time. Things between her and her husband Marcus aren’t perfect, but after 11 years what marriage is? But, if the secrets that lay behind the walls of the Donovan home were ever exposed, life would never be the same for anyone.

When an unexpected visitor from Sophia’s past shows up, she is forced to come to terms with her suspicions. As Sophia unravels the truth about the people closest to her, it quickly becomes clear that fighting to save her marriage won’t be nearly as important as fighting to save her life.

“Beyond the Red Carpet is an action-packed, well-written Hollywood mystery, a modern story reminiscent of Harold Robbins’ and Jacqueline Susann’s classics.” —Book Addict

 

The Nuremberg Puzzle by Laurence O'BryanThe Nuremberg Puzzle

This well paced thriller has a mix of history dating back to the Hitler years in Nuremberg, suspense, and a shocking ending. If you like action, history, and a real sense of place and time, you will love this book!

Sean Ryan discovers a terrifying conspiracy to rid Germany of its refugees. After flying to Nuremberg, he sees blood on its streets, and anger boiling over.

An old friend in the city, Eleni Kibre, tells him about the anti-refugee groups spreading fast across Germany. An hour after he leaves her she is murdered. The police arrive at Sean’s hotel to question him. He was the last person to see her alive. Then Eleni’s partner goes missing.

Can Sean stop a new genocide, or will he too become a victim?

Hatred of foreigners has been buried for decades in Europe, but not deep enough. Long lost letters from Pope Pius XII to Adolf Hitler, which the Vatican is willing to do anything to retrieve, are the final pieces of this truly shocking puzzle, which Sean must solve before a modern genocide is released on the world.

“Another great book by a up and coming superstar — I have read all of the Laurence O’Bryan Puzzle” books…I love the way he weaves factual history into current fictional situations.” —Gloria Antypowich

To receive a free ebook copy of The Nuremberg Puzzle please click here.

The Movement

Jody Sabral

TM Jody Sabral

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‘In war, truth is the first casualty.’ Aeschylus (525 BC – 456 BC)

‘Istanbul is a hall of mirrors where nothing is as it seems.' Elif Safak

‘Democracy is like a train, you get off once you reach the station.’ Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President

The nation’s land is sacred. It cannot be left to fate.

He hardly recognised her this evening with silky black hair loosely falling against her pale shoulders, a scarf casually draped around her elegant neck. Her fragile body looked even more vulnerable in a sleeveless vest and skinny jeans. He balled his fists and a pulse beat visibly in the side of his neck. She lit a long slim cigarette poised between fine lips painted a shocking red. His breath quickened, his face felt red like her lips and smouldering hot like the cigarette.
The scrawny youth tucked in beside her on the park bench held her free hand in his. She pulled it away playfully, but let his fingers follow it to touch her hair. Allah askina, what did she think she was doing? Boys would be boys, but she should know better. She was an honest girl and what they were doing was sinful. Did she… he… they… have no modesty? The prophet, peace be upon him, said that modesty is part of faith. Did she have no faith?
The two of them had been sitting there for an hour more or less, ignoring the thousands of anti-government protesters milling about under the giant sycamore trees hanging over them. They had eyes only for each other. It made him sick to the stomach. To their left, a group of activists were gathering by a statue of Ataturk, planning some ungodly act of rebellion, whether it be to vandalize a government building or construct another barricade, they all needed to be stopped. Turkey needed to be saved from the evil of secularism, an imposition from the Western powers at the time when the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
He had become distracted, but then the politics of Turkey had a natural way of causing distraction, being so unstable and irrational. Culture wars had been going on here for decades and there was still no clear winner. That’s what the protests were about now really, but he hoped that good would triumph over evil and that the government would win. The President was a pious Muslim, a good man with a clear vision for Turkey. Islam is the submission to God, he often said in his speeches and this was the only future that made sense.

Night Watcher

Chris Longmuir

NightWatcher2016 EBOOK

NightWatcher2016-EBOOK

 

Mist shrouded everything except for the Discovery’s skeletal masts pointing long bony fingers into the sky. It was an omen.

He had come to the right place.

There had been so many places since he had last been in Dundee, but he doubted anyone here would connect him with the skinny little lad ejected forcibly from his birthplace, and sent to a borstal far away. They were no longer known as borstals though, secure accommodation, that’s what they called them nowadays. As if the name made any difference. They were still the same brutal lockups they had always been.

Smiling grimly, he pulled his collar up and the brim of his hat forward until only his eyes showed. He turned his back on the glass frontage of the station and shuffled in the direction of the pedestrian bridge.

It was not there. Confused, he stopped and stared. Everything had changed. He did not like change, it unsettled, immobilized him. He turned in a slow circle. The Discovery was behind him, its masts now barely visible. Hazy lights from Tayside House’s tower building pierced the mist, over to his right, and in front of him the dual carriageway – but no pedestrian bridge.

He sent a silent plea to the voice asking him what he should do. But the voice had been silent for some time now, demonstrating its disapproval, because he had acted on his own initiative before he left Newcastle.

The voice had not told him to end the social worker’s life, nor had it instructed him to set fire to her office. But at the time he had been thinking clearly and, knowing he had to vanish, it had seemed sensible to leave no clues to where he had gone.

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