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EDEN’S GATE by David Hagberg

EDEN’S GATE

by David Hagberg

Pub Date: June 1st, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-86129-X
Publisher: Forge

Typing at mach-speed, ex–Air Force cryptographer Hagberg has published over 60 suspensers under various pen names (Sean Flannery, etc.).

This time out, he abandons his long-dependable hero Kirk McGarvey (Joshua’s Hammer, 2000, etc.), CIA deputy director of operations, and rings in former National Security Agent Bill Lane to roust some German renegades holed up in Montana. The German government fears the worst from Captain Helmut Speyer, once the terror of East Berlin, now that he has gathered into himself the horrors of Reichsamt 17, the now-underwater genetics research lab where ghastly experiments took place. What deadly weapon has Speyer devised down there? Lane and his wife Frannie, a lieutenant commander in Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, head a supersecret, tiny group of troubleshooters for the White House and 10 Downing Street called “The Room.” Lane is in the small town of Kalispell, Montana, checking up on Herbert Sloan, a disguise now borne by Speyer, former East German Stasi intelligence officer and hit man. Masquerading as an ex–South African intelligence officer who got fired because he was Mrs. de Klerk’s lover, Lane infiltrates Speyer’s outfit with cleverness, suavity, and supergadgetry that out-Bond Bond. But Speyer’s group has a very dangerous job for Lane, requiring him to dive down two hundred meters into underwater Reichsamt 17, supposedly to recover $300 million in diamonds but really to recover—well, Eden. Eden? The real deal, Speyer pretends, is that he wants to sell the diamonds to the German government, which is having horrible trouble giving stolen gold back to the Jews. But Speyer will need Cuba to broker the deal with Germany. Then Speyer will take that money and open hotels and casinos in Cuba, his cash cow for the rest of his life—and, voilà, Eden! But couldn’t all this turn on something much, much worse? And Eden itself be a dream?

Smooth sailing. Have no fear, Hagberg fans, that any page might be dull.