BURNING THE APOSTLE

The cold war is over, but the November Man continues. This time, the moody, middle-aged spy is up against rich, rabid environmentalists who plan to destroy the American nuclear energy industry. A bank that is awfully like the BCCI and an ancient creepy, cynical Washington superlawyer who is awfully like Washington's most notorious ancient superlawyer are the touches of authenticity that keep things more or less believable as Deveraux applies his espionage skills to the activities of a perverted lawyer with ties to the Middle East. For investigative reasons, Deveraux has been blackmailing the pedophilic attorney who, before he can tell all, dies at the hands of Levantine assassins. What's going on? The dead lawyer's superpowerful law firm is the agent for an unholy alliance of Arab money and American eco-terrorism. The chief eco-terrorist is gorgeous, superrich Britta Andrews. The very manipulative Andrews wants to bring an end to the atomic energy industry by burning down a nuclear-power plant. To that end she has sexually enslaved a very willing US Senator and hired a disgruntled, recently laid-off Army demolition expert, a world-class pyromaniac who establishes his bona fides by setting fire to the Pentagon. Britta could pay the firebug out of her own fortune, but, since this is Washington, she prefers to use Other People's Money and, as the Arabs always like to put their petrodollars to work in ways that will annoy the Great Satan, there's a natural connection—but she needs the nasty lawyers, their creepy skills, and their rotten bank. Deveraux needs to find out how everything is tied together before Greater Chicago is blanketed in a cloud of radioactive ash. He has the help of another disgruntled army demolitions expert and the expert's sadly nymphomaniacal ex-wife. No more ridiculously incredible than Iraqgate, BCCI, or any other goofy Washingtonian screwup. Deveraux gets less and less mannered, and that's to the better.