CROSSFIRE

Russians, Iranians, Americans, Nazis, Israelis, and Argentines go for each others' throats in the search for real, fake, old, and new gold in at least two hemispheres. Hagberg (Countdown, Cross Fire) also writes as Sean Flannery (Counterstrike, Crossed Swords). The mystery guest enters the American Embassy in Paris and signs in as Kirk McGarvey. He conducts a bit of fake business about a lapsed passport and then wanders off on his own to plant enough plastic explosive to demolish the building and then slips outside to push the button. The real Kirk McGarvey, an out-of- favor CIA assassin, recognizes the professional signature of Arkady Kurshin, the Russian superagent that McGarvey himself had shot and thrown overboard in the middle of the Mediterranean. Could Kurshin have survived? And is he carrying out a personal vendetta? He could and he is. McGarvey, who hadn't been doing much of anything, suddenly has his hands full searching for Kurshin—whose Paris job is just the first in a series planned for all the major European capitals—and also searching with a very tense, very sexy brunette for a missing Nazi submarine, last seen off Argentina. The U-boat's captain was the brunette's father, and there was a very valuable cargo—possibly a load of ill-gotten gold the size of a shipment from the US to Iran that McGarvey must keep from disappearing into the Soviet Disunion. Sounds terribly confusing, but it's not. After 18 journeyman thrillers, Hagberg knows what he's doing. McGarvey wears very well indeed.