Showing results by author "Brian Freemantle" in All Categories

In Moscow a serial killer is on the loose - taking his victims' hair as a souvenir, carefully removing the buttons from their clothes. For Militia Colonel Dimitri Danilov, a good cop with a bad personal life, catching this madman is a matter of pride. But then the killer brings the U.S. government into the case. The latest victim is an American embassy economist, the beautiful niece of a powerful U.S. senator, and a woman with kinky secrets of her own. Now Danilov must team up with elite FBI agent Bill Cowley.

Charlie Muffin, an endearing spy, irritates his new boss and co-workers because of his appearance and age, but that doesn't stop them from taking the credit for his accomplishments. But Charlie perseveres and proves to be right over and over again in this story of the capture of a KGB general who is running a spy network in England.

Charlie Muffin has done well since he “died.” He’s been on the run for years from the intelligence forces of Great Britain and the United States when an official declaration of death finally puts an end to their pursuit. Suddenly, Charlie can breathe again. He’s even put a lid on his single malt whisky habit. Now all he needs is a job.

There’s nothing surprising about the body. The wounds are precise, their meaning clear. The Washington, DC, cops have seen enough like them to know that they mean a mob hit. And when mobsters kill their own, there’s not much the police can do about it. They’re prepared to dismiss the case when someone looks at the dead man’s ID. He was Russian - and a diplomat. William Cowley, the head of the FBI’s Russian office, takes on the case.

Six Israeli commandos land on a lakeshore in Austria, hunting for something that has been hidden underwater for over thirty years. The lake holds many secrets left behind by the Nazi high command as their regime crumbled in 1945. There are millions of dollars in international currency, bonds, and gold bullion, but the commandos want none of it. They have come for boxes of files - containing information about the hiding places of every Nazi war criminal who evaded judgment at Nuremberg.

With eviction looming, St. Ives searches for a big payday and a rare book. Philip St. Ives has no love for New York's drafty, broken-down Adelphi Hotel, but he is in no mood to be evicted from it. His cash dwindling, he is happy to learn about a job that calls for his specific talents as a mediator between thieves and their victims. It sounds like the set-up to a bad joke: A thief, an insurance salesman, and the Library of Congress call Philip's lawyer to ask about a stolen copy of Pliny's Historia Naturalis. To find it, Philip will risk becoming history himself.

To prevent the escalating possibility of the Russian mob getting its hands on the main ingredient to build an atomic bomb, British agent Charlie Muffin is sent to Moscow, where he must go undercover as an arms trader to infiltrate leading Russian Mafia families.

The people in the car don’t recognize Mary as anything special. They see the skinny ten-year-old as just another young girl on the streets of Brussels, not as the daughter of a US ambassador. The black car stops and Mary, used to having a chauffeur, climbs aboard. Before she knows what’s happening, she is on her way to a mansion in Antwerp with a specially designed, child-sized cell. She has been abducted. Now, a team of FBI agents, along with Europe’s foremost psychological profiler, are on the hunt for the girl’s captors.

It could be the most sensational defection of all time. The head of the Russian KGB’s cipher section comes with every code, every plot, every secret. But his most startling disclosure of all is that the Russians are planning a shocking assassination. But the defector doesn’t know who. Or where. Or how. Or when. All Charlie knows is that he must stop the murder from happening - without being marked for death himself.

Charlie Muffin shouldn’t be condemned for mourning the end of the Cold War. For decades the KGB provided him with endless professional success and now that it’s gone, Charlie is nearly out of a job. Removed from active duty, he is now training new recruits on operations in a post-Soviet era. It’s dull work that leaves Charlie yearning for the adventures of old and this time, he’ll get more than he bargained for.

The CIA sends Hartman because he knows the target’s face. Hartman spent two years in Bergen-Belsen and knows camp commandant Fritz Lang’s face better than anyone. The Nazi has taken up residence in a Panamanian port, supplementing his realtor’s salary with monthly infusions from a numbered Swiss account. Despite Lang’s extensive plastic surgery, Hartman recognizes him. It’s a face he could never forget, and it’s time to make him pay.

The KGB is never surprised. When Jeremy Brinkman’s file lands on the director’s desk, informing him of the new British cultural attaché, the spymaster knows what it means: The Queen has a new agent working in Moscow. To the director, Jeremy is simply another small concern - something to be contained and controlled.

Charlie Muffin was once the toughest agent in British intelligence. He wasn’t strong, fast, or charming, but he knew how to survive. When his agency branded him a traitor, he eluded their pursuit for years. After eventually proving his innocence, he’s invited back into The Firm. But only just. Consigned to a monotonous desk job, it takes months for Charlie to get a real assignment. A KGB agent in Tokyo wants to defect to the other side. Charlie’s role is to bring him across.

Charlie Muffin is back at rock bottom. The ex-spy has had a rough few years since British intelligence first turned on him and forced him to go into hiding. He’s drinking again, forgetting things - getting soft. He hasn’t even noticed the tap on his phone. Though Charlie doesn’t know it yet, the walls are closing in again. He takes a job for his only friend, Rupert Willoughby, who sends Charlie to Rome to check the security system for some valuable jewels. Charlie has chosen the wrong time to visit the Eternal City. There’s a mole in the British embassy there, and the agents of the East and West are homing in fast.

The world financial market has become unbalanced. Nations in South America, Africa, and Eastern Europe are trillions of dollars in debt, and a default by any one of them could start a domino effect that would eventually topple the economies of America and Europe. Across the Western hemisphere, economists such as Tom Pike are devising a brilliant plan to head off the collapse. The situation is dire, but with transatlantic cooperation there should be time to stave off disaster. But something is not as it seems. Before long, Tom realizes that the economic turmoil was deliberately created.

Peterson is bewildered by the satellite photos in front of him. As head of the CIA, he is never supposed to be surprised, but what could be happening in Chad alarms him. The pictures show a small research installation, nestled in the African jungle, where a West German company claims to be building a base to launch communications satellites for use by developing African nations. But Peterson’s analysts tell him that the ordinary, innocent-looking silo is just the size necessary to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile into outer space.

Charlie Muffin is too good an agent to be working a desk, but after a bust-up with his new director, he has been relegated to clerk work. Among the heaps of papers, though, Charlie stumbles upon the clues to a last-gasp plot from the collapsing Soviet Union. The signs point to a new Soviet Star Wars system - and to the involvement of a British traitor.

Jack Mason is ready to kill. For 15 years he has plotted revenge from his prison cell. He has exercised daily, keeping his body and mind fit, and learned all he could about computers, so that he could be able to manipulate them at will. He will need to use all his mental powers to find Sobell, and all his merciless strength to kill him. An ex-CIA agent, Mason was jailed for spying on his country for the Russians. Sobell was the KGB colonel who recruited him and, when the scheme turned sour, sold him out.

Death is no obstacle for Harold Taylor. Since the 18th century he has been reincarnated into a handful of identities. He won fame as an eye surgeon in Victorian England, established St. Louis’s first brothels as an American settler, and survived the trenches of the First World War only to be executed in a court martial. But despite his different lives, one thing always remains the same: Harold Taylor is a murderer. Blood is the secret to Taylor’s reincarnation. At each rebirth, he marks for death those who wronged him in the past, and by spilling their blood he guarantees himself another try at life. This time he has a new plan....

They call Charlie Muffin a traitor. He has been on the run ever since the blow-up in Berlin, when British intelligence declared him obsolete and tried to kill him. Charlie outsmarted them then, and he has done so ever since, staying one step ahead by forgoing any semblance of an even halfway normal life. Now he is alone in Hong Kong and his only protector and friend, Rupert Willoughby, is a hemisphere away. Now Rupert is in trouble. He has invested £6 million in a massive new ocean liner but the ship is destroyed by arsonists, burning completely down in a Hong Kong harbor.