The Contractor - Hardcover

MacKinnon, Colin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312355785 ISBN 13: 9780312355784

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2009

Synopsis

Rick Behringer is an outside contractor working for the Central Intelligence Agency. He owns a small company that, in the light of day, provides communications security for government offices, including the CIA. In the shadows, though, Rick’s a spy. He runs overseas agents for the CIA and, through his firm, buys foreign military technology that the Agency wants to inspect but can’t be seen purchasing.

The divorced father of two little girls, Rick carries on a cold war with his ex, Liz, and a hot romance with his sexy girlfriend, Frannie. He still broods over the mysterious death of his father, a high-level CIA officer during the Vietnam War, who committed suicide when Rick was thirteen.

Through contacts in what he calls the “Black World,” Rick hears of a mysterious Pakistani Islamist, a rogue nuclear physicist, who is trying to acquire highly-enriched uranium in order to construct “an Islamic bomb” - a scheme that is all too credible. In tracking him down, Rick encounters a host of characters, some willing to help, many more willing to take his life. And in the explosive conclusion, he struggles in a deadly game of wits with Russian gangsters and the terrorist who is plotting nuclear mass murder in America. 

In The Contractor, Colin MacKinnon shows once again his rare ability to turn real-world facts into riveting spy fiction. The Contractor could happen...could be happening now.

About this title

About the Author

COLIN MACKINNON is former chief editor of Middle East Executive Reports. He is author of the well-received novels Finding Hoseyn and Morning Spy, Evening Spy. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland with his wife Diane.

Reviews

Middle East expert MacKinnon (Morning Spy, Evening Spy) puts a fresh twist on the stolen suitcase-nuke plot in this smart thriller. Rick Behringer runs Global Reach Technologies, a company that designs communications systems, but his real job is as a contractor to the CIA. Rick specializes in what is known as foreign matériel acquisition, which means he buys weapons illegally from other countries and passes them along to the CIA. The money is good, and Rick has a strong sense of patriotism, but mostly he likes the adrenaline high that comes with this outsourced spy work. When Rick comes across a Pakistani, Ahmed Sajid (aka the Engineer), who's attempting to acquire nuclear material from a Russian gangster to build an atomic weapon for terrorist purposes, Rick's CIA handlers push him to investigate. Soon Rick finds himself in serious trouble. This fine espionage procedural should please spy and adventure fans alike. (Mar.)
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MacKinnon’s latest, following Morning Spy, Evening Spy (2006), sprawls from Washington to Siberia, Istanbul, Dubai, and points in between to tell a tale of the efforts of a shadowy Pakistani engineer and his terrorist sponsors to acquire an “Islamic bomb.” The contractor is Rick Behringer, a telecom security consultant and contract agent for the CIA. Because the Agency has lost a political turf war, Behringer is pretty much the only CIA agent who can stop the Pakistani’s scheme. If that sounds James Bondish, it’s not; in fact, it’s an eerily plausible story. The Pakistani engineer is presented as the protégé of A. Q. Khan, who sold nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea; meanwhile, the U.S. has outsourced human intelligence in Turkey and the Persian Gulf to a Blackwater-like private company. There is a wealth of fascinating detail here about telecommunications, signals-intelligence wizardry, and post-9/11 realpolitik. Behringer is fully fleshed, and the subplot concerning his CIA analyst father’s suicide is nicely meshed into a truly compelling contemporary spy thriller. --Thomas Gaughan

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312355785
• ISBN 13: 9780312355784
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320