Final Payment (Paperback)

Final Payment is a Cold War thriller. When an Israeli aircraft struck by a missile fired from Egypt crash lands in the occupied Sinai, CIA officers Serina Gray and Clay Kinkaide are tasked to purchase the damaged Soviet weapon. The Israeli Mossad agrees to sell it, but demands a strange price: $10 million cash and Joachim Van Altmann, a U.S. Citizen serving as caretaker officer on a ship marooned in the Great Bitter Lake, whom they assert is a Nazi war criminal. Van Altmann is not a Nazi, but an NSA officer operating a secret monitoring station on his ship. When the Mossad rejects CIA assurances about him and threaten to kidnap or kill him if the exchange is not made, Clay and Serina place Van Altmann in Israeli custody as security for their pledge to help locate the real Martin Bormann. A world-wide search for Bormann locates him in Paraguay and he is captured in a black operation by an American-Israeli team, but one Israeli is wounded in the assault and the other appears to be the cause. Bormann manages to thwart the team's escape and they are forced into hiding in Argentina. During the evacuation of the Israelis, Serina is ambushed by the police and Clay, who witnesses her capture, can do nothing to help her. She is brutally tortured, but remains silent to protect him. Clay determines to rescue Serina, whom he has fallen in love with, and with help from Tomaz, a local agent, goes in search of her. He is wounded while attacking the police installation where she is held, but is still able to escape with her. They find refuge and medical help at a lakeside resort and escape from Paraguay after a perilous boat passage down the Parana River. Back in Tel Aviv, Serina and Clay learn they must outwit the Soviet double agent who betrayed them in Paraguay, obtain the missile and gain Van Altmann's release, all while blocking a Soviet plot to cause an atomic detonation in Israel.

Quentin Thomas Wells Quentin Thomas Wells was born in Salt Lake City in 1941. He is a 1965 graduate of the University of Utah with a magna cum laude degree in international politics and history. He began his professional career as a clandestine Intelligence Officer for the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C. He worked as a case officer in Soviet Bloc Operations Division and as an intelligence analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence where he wrote analytical reports for the President and other government officials. Upon leaving the CIA, he became the Director of Abacus Ltd., a full-service advertising agency in Salt Lake City. He later became a motion picture writer and producer, first as Production Manager for Stockdale Corporation, then as president of his own firm, Executive Services, Inc., which specialized in technical writing and the production of documentary and educational films. Wells founded and operated several small businesses during the 1970s and 1980s, among which were a leasing company, Executive Services, Inc., a vending company, and a video and software distribution company, Publisher's Software Network. In 1981 Wells joined Career Research Corporation, a manufacturer of technology education systems, as Development Director. He later became General Manager of the firm. In 1989 he left Career Research to serve for three years as President of the Sandy Area Chamber of Commerce. In 1991 Wells joined the staff of Salt Lake Community College and became Director of the Program Innovation Department. He later moved to the Communications Department as Director of the College's Student Media Center where he taught courses in video and audio production and supervised the student media outlets. After his retirement from full-time work at the college in 2008, Wells has continued to do research at the school and to serve as volunteer curator of the B. Robert McIntyre Antique Electronics Collection housed there. Wells is currently a part-time private investigator who specializes in locating missing persons and records. He is also writing new non-fiction and fiction books for publication. Wells is the author of nine books, over 30 documentary video programs and films, more than 40 technical instruction manuals, and dozens of television commercials. He has also written, produced and directed video courses for television and the Internet, CBE courses for college classroom use, and numerous corporate training programs.