Showing results by author "Brian Freemantle" in All Categories

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, 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 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.

On 5th December 1872, Captain David Reed Morehouse sighted the Mary Celeste, an American half-brig carrying 1,700 barrels of commercial alcohol, apparently calling for help. The fluttering he took to be a distress signal was a ripped, tattered sail; the wheel was unmanned; the master, Captain Briggs; his wife; their two-year-old daughter; and the entire crew had disappeared. Frederick Solly Flood, attorney general of Gibraltar, can see only one possible cause - mutiny and murder. In a tense courtroom, he is determined to prove a dreadful crime has been committed; turning a civil inquiry into a criminal prosecution.

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.

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.

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.

Charlie Muffin has come back to England. The ex-spy, a veteran of 25 years’ service to the Crown, was last seen in Berlin, where an attempt on his life by his own organization led to international embarrassment. They had expected Charlie—a disheveled, middle-aged survivor of every double cross in the book—to die easily. Instead, he disappeared.

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.

His grandfather was a lawman too. That’s how Charles O’Farrell rationalizes his work. He keeps a picture of his ancestor by his bed, a faded sepia portrait of a short, plain-looking man made remarkable only by the long-barreled Colt strapped to his hip. His grandfather killed to make the frontier safe—O’Farrell has the faded newspaper clippings to prove it. In the service of America, O’Farrell kills too. But his killings never make the front page.

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.

After a trumped-up trial, Charlie Muffin lands in jail for treason - ready to learn the secrets of his fellow inmate, a convicted British traitor. Nobody expected KGB agents to stage a prison break to free their man. Charlie faces another choice: go to Moscow to complete his assignment or face 40 long years in prison. It doesn’t take him long to decide. Charlie doesn’t have the full picture, of course, which is the way of espionage. But Charlie doesn’t regret his Iron Curtain escape, as it leads him to Natalia Fedova, the KGB interrogator assigned to determine if his defection is genuine or staged.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Adrian Dodds is a man without hobbies, friends, or family, who works a very peculiar job. Though he looks like a pencil pusher, he is a British counter-intelligence agent. In his own quiet, bureaucratic way, Dodds is vital to the security of the United Kingdom. His latest assignment is debriefing Viktor Pavel, a Soviet aeronautics genius who escapes his handlers to become the Cold War’s most high-profile defector.

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 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.

The Soviet Union is in turmoil. With the election of Gorbachev have come new ideas about freedom, compassion, and openness - ideas that leave no place for the dark machinations of the KGB. Reform is coming to the Soviet intelligence service, unless Victor Ivanovich Kazin can stop it. Kazin is one of the Old Guard, and an agent doesn’t survive three decades in the KGB without being relentless. He is a liar, a cheat, a backstabber - and he is proud of it.