TELEFON

by Walter Wager ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1974

First, normally placid Harry Bascomb blows up a U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Base near Denver. . .then a Maine woman ignites all the fuel at a jet fighter base. . .and only the KGB knows for sure why the American military targets are being sabotaged by seemingly respectable citizens. Colonel Malchenko of Internal Security is the one who realized that KGB documents expert Nicolai Dalchimski is the catalyst -- a demented Stalinist conspirator who's escaped to the States with the Telefon Book and $300,000 in purloined funds -- plenty of change to call the 140 ""perfect"" deep-cover agents who've been hypnotized to believe they're Americans. . .that is, until they're phoned and given the coded signal which triggers them to destroy strategic target areas. Operation Telefon -- conceived in case of nuclear war -- had been in cold storage for fourteen years. Now the Kremlin's top agent-assassin Grigori Tabbat is dispatched to seek and destroy Dalchimski before the ""homicidal maniac"" sets off WW III. From the moment the KGB Major Tabbat parachutes and submarines his way onto Long Island -- where he's met by his pleasingly operational operative ""wife"" Barbi -- his is a gritty, gadgetless Mission Impossible. Several more sleeper agents are activated across the country before Tabbat and CIA computer analyst Dorothy Putterman get a fix on his location. Meanwhile, the Red Army Chief of Staff finds both the Telefon deep-plants and Tabbat expendable as GRU assassin squads prepare to go to work. Wager's best so far is crisp and pulsating. Nonstop suspense programmed to entertain -- this Muscovite Candidate should be a front runner.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1974

Categories: FICTION