THE 13TH DIRECTORATE

As he will no doubt continue to do for years, the late Kim Philby raises his treacherous head once more in this thriller about a glasnost-era KGB plot to control the White House. What's Philby up to this time? Perestroika should have put him and his long-term American subversion plan on the sidelines, but he's invested too much time and energy on his very own KGB division, the 13th Directorate, to give up just yet. And besides, not everybody in the Politburo is that crazy about or commited to the General Secretary's policies. So, maybe he'll have to modify the plan just a little. It will still confuse and confound the capitalists, to whose defense is called Nick Delan, nÉ Delano, of the Chicago Mafioso Delanos, now a skilled assassin in a super-super-secret U.S. Army unit. Delan leaves the pleasures of St. Moritz--where he has been working an Iranian arms deal with far more skill than the less-secret Oliver North and where he has fallen in love with the beautiful-but-braised Clio Bragana--and travels to L.A. to see to the elimination of Philby's movie-star candidate for the presidency. By happy coincidence, lovely Clio has gotten a modeling assignment in California, and they are able to resume their mutual explorations. But the assassination work turns ugly when Delan finds he is being watched by all sorts of people who shouldn't even know he is there. There seems to be no one to trust but Clio. Pleasantly salacious, with plenty of high-tech glitz and a curiously old-fashioned 007 atmosphere.