Codename Hannah

Codename Hannah is more than a spy thriller. It's about an American Everyman who's also a brilliant computer coder caught in the crosshairs when he's acknowledged and hired to do a job critical to national security. Milo Caldwell crafts a translation of embedded code originating in the Middle East. A code that can save or doom millions of lives. Caldwell, an apolitical, largely apathetic man obsessed with the important work he's tapped for, faces every temptation possible. He does not fare well; greed, avarice, and sloth are the least of what hounds him. In the course of Codename Hannah, his moral center fractures. His abrasive, newfound wealth and privilege-unfortunately set in "The Biggest Little City in the World" where anything goes-first overwhelm him, then shake his core beliefs like the ripples of a pebble thrown into a pond. Acting out his base instincts, he runs the gamut of self-betrayal and finally questions his life and actions. Codename Hannah examines not only the classified work of one man, but the failure of the democratic ideal, and corporate America's unrelenting greed. In high and secret places, business and government contort, trade, lie, and jockey for top dollar. Do the mechanics of getting and holding monetary power destroy even lip service to truth? Why do we know nothing about billions spent on gifts and entertainment in glittering casinos and open-ended "black bag" cash? The book reveals how the business, the military, and private citizens play a dangerous game over which, like Caldwell, they choose to have no control, ethical standards, or responsibility for repercussions. Actions that play fast and loose with the greatest country in the world... The entanglements of Milo's descent mirror the nation's failures in many areas. Whether he can salvage his own life is left to the reader's judgment.