This story deals with the highest levels of the KGB (before disbanding) and the highest level of our CIA and intelligence services. Though written over 20 years ago, the treachery, aggression and drive to conquer still exists in both governments -though now they have to acknowledge terrorism and all the middle east conflicts and sell-outs as competitors in driving their ideology in the world's opinion, at the cost of lives still uncounted. The author's career as correspondent in Europe as well as his expertise have fashioned government hirelings driven to use any means to succeed and they are believable and scary. This is international terrorism spelled out as if a manual for murderers and thugs is still being written. And on a high level. Recommended.
Working with KGB defectors, former top officials of the CIA, and scientists at the forefront of a revolution in brain research, Larry Collins has constructed a diabolically clever conspiracy. At its center are a beautiful Soviet scientist who has discovered the key to manipulating human emotions by remote means, and the newly appointed head of the KGB. A ruthless man, he is determined to do anything to reverse his country's declining fortunes, to halt the onrush of perestroika and check the tide of Islamic Fundamentalism that threatens to split up the Soviet Empire in places like Azerbaijan. His target: the mind of the President of the United States.
Although the indefatigable Collins ( Is Paris Burning? ; Fall From Grace ) has come up with a far-fetched and even foolish plot this time around, his uncanny command of the inner workings of the international intelligence apparatus lends a semblance of plausibility to events in this espionage thriller. The action begins with the KGB's murder of a New York psychic with a flair for locating the coordinates of Soviet submarines. She had been helpful in CIA mind experiments, but the Russians are onto something even better: a device that uses electromagnetic waves to trigger responses in the brains of unsuspecting people at a distance. The KGB intends to use this magneto-encephalogram to zap the U.S. president during a crisis. First, Arab terrorists controlled by Moscow blow up a U.S. Army-run high school in Germany, killing many teenagers. Then the zapping of the president begins, and our enraged, mentally unhinged Chief Executive gives the order to nuke Iran in retaliation. A subplot involving rebellious Moslem nationalists within the U.S.S.R. provides an unusual perspective on internal pressures facing Kremlin and KGB bureaucrats. Collins gives his spies and politicos some psychological depth, even if he stretches credibility when the CIA chief of behavior research falls for his hyponotherapist in a fatally dumb dalliance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW
A very good thriller--suspensful, and nerve-wrenching to read.
