The persistent crackle of low voltage paranoia runs through two connected narratives from the fringes of the intelligence world.
Grant and Nick are loners headed to the same nowhere on different paths. Grant, a former government operative, works the shadowy middle between the FBI and the CIA, planning regime change and tracking terrorists half a world away. A black dwarf living in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, Grant is a very unlikely spy. He’s bitter and friendless. Nick, a once-promising athlete whose Olympic dreams were shattered by injury, works the graveyard shift in a dingy porn store near Grant’s apartment. He’s bored and restless. Both are ripe for some action.
One night, perhaps by chance, Nick and Grant meet. Nick quickly finds himself swept up into Grant’s plot to assassinate Saddam Hussein, and before he knows it he is in Baghdad with a sniper rifle in his hands. Too late, Nick begins to wonder whether he’ll be a hero in a government-sponsored mission or a patsy in a bizarre hoax cooked up by Grant on his own.
A decade later, the once-frantic hunt for Osama bin Laden has stalled into a national embarrassment. Bin Laden evades capture, and the war in Afghanistan drags on. Grant, still working his way into the FBI’s good graces, pursues a promising lead in the most unexpected of places. But the lead could be an illusion, and Grant might never find his way back in from the cold.
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