The Orchestration ~ Hardback ~ Stephen L Burkart

The Orchestration ~ Hardback ~ Stephen L Burkart
$58.99

After receiving material from a former adversary alleging that the next President of the United States is a Russian mole and co-conspirator in a plot to overthrow the government, John Darque, known as Chadeaux (Shadow), and the covert organization he heads must act quickly to determine the facts. Surveillance of a KGB operative in a seemingly unrelated situation develops a lead, Albert Michaels, which may only be coincidental, but this is a concept that doesn't exist in Darque's view of reality. In order to advance the investigation, a female asset is used to make contact with Michaels and determine his relationship with the KGB, but an inadvertent mistake made by a member of the surveillance team observing the meeting exposes the asset as a threat to the conspirators. The asset and her control agent, Penny Miller, a team leader in Darque's organization, as well as being his confidant and lover, are targeted for death by the KGB, but only the asset is killed while Miller is seriously injured in a staged vehicle accident. At this point, Darque's passive approach to the situation changes to active ... in a big way. As more and more information is developed confirming the conspiracy, a person from the Middle East, whose picture had been found on several passports, appears in Berlin, and then disappears. Michaels eventually fulfills his role in the cabal by flying to Germany and delivering a car to a location where it is retrieved by Auric, the only name found for the man who seemed to vanish in Berlin. Before Auric could retrieve the car, it was inspected by Darque's team and found to contain a low yield nuclear device in the trunk which they deactivated. After Auric arrived to pick up the car, he was kept under constant surveillance until he delivered it to an empty building on Ramstein Air Base in Germany. With the delivery of the vehicle, Auric's use to the conspiracy, and Darque, came to an end. After being questioned about his mission, the gold necklace he wore, and his initial dispatch point, he 'accidently' fell into a vat of molten steel; the necklace ended up on Darque's desk, and, after being hollowed out and filled with a liquid explosive, it was 'returned' to the person who had dispatched Auric with rather drastic results. With the bomb deactivated, and several of the conspirators eliminated, the real danger was over, so Darque conceived a plan that would take him and a select team to Europe where the remaining members of the coup would be neutralized without arousing suspicion or starting WW III. It involved substituting doubles for the remaining plotters until he had total control of the situation. He would then reinsert the remaining cabal members, to include the next President of the United States, in a planned incident that would kill all of them in a way that would make them appear to be the victims of a tragic accident. However, as is often the case, everything didn't go according to plan, but through what might be called an act of God, the ensuing incident did preclude any possibility of an investigation turning up anything suspicious concerning the deaths of the plotters. Unfortunately, it also brought about the deaths of some innocent people, but the resulting confusion allowed Darque and his team to depart Europe unhindered and return to the U.S. to await their next mission.