GOERING'S LIST

A tough-as-nails Delta Force vet who freelances for the CIA teams up with a Mossad lovely to hunt down a ruthless terrorist known only as Dieter in a twisty, to-the-ends-of-the-earth technothriller from Pollock (Threat Case, 1991; Payback, 1989, etc.). A sometime member of East Germany's secret police, the chameleon-like Dieter obtains from his late father (a former SS major) a roster of those to whom the Nazis sold stolen art treasures during WW II. To raise the millions he needs to revive the Red Army Faction, Dieter tracks down the surviving owners, killing them and selling their illicit masterpieces on the international black market. His murderous exploits on two continents soon put Langley, Tel Aviv, and Moscow on the renegade Stasi officer's trail. Leading the manhunt is Mike Semko, a fortysomething hard case who has a personal score to settle with Dieter. Semko is reluctantly paired with Rachel Sidrane, an American-born Israeli citizen who knows her way around fine art— and modern weaponry. As the odd couple tracks Dieter along his corpse-strewn way from N.Y.C.'s Upper East Side to rural England, Paris, and beyond, they begin to realize there's rather more to Goering's little list than their duplicitous masters have told them. Nor do Mike and Rachel know until late in the game that the SVR (the KGB's successor) has dealt itself in. They persevere, however, and eventually corner Dieter, gunning him down in a spectacular shootout at his lair deep in the Black Forest. Slam-bang action (including a high-noon car chase through Midtown Manhattan), technical detail that attests to the author's familiarity with state-of-the-art hardware, wide-ranging plotlines that are kept under firm control, and characters of above-average complexity—all make for a vastly entertaining exercise in haute hokum.