“Peculiar” is what the coroner called Albert Ruppert Manigrove III’s death on a dark highway just outside Fort Knox, guardian of America’s gold and home to secret U.S. military operations. It's the early 1950s, and the Cold War has turned hot. Super powers Russia and the U.S. are pitted against each other in a struggle for control of the Korean Peninsula. While this bloody encounter rages on, a more fundamental contest is being played out in secret laboratories and testing sites around the globe. Its signature is the monstrous mushroom cloud—the Hydrogen Bomb, mankind’s deadliest weapon. Was Captain Manigrove’s death tied to the gold or was he a casualty of this secret war?
As an award-winning investigative journalist, editor and political columnist, Alan Eysen wrote for many years about real-world financial and political corruption. At Newsday, he served as a prominent member of the investigative team that won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for exposing misconduct involving Long Island public officials. After more than thirty years in journalism, he became a political consultant and experienced the other side of the story. Today, Eysen resides in the lowcountry of South Carolina, where he continues to write and be inspired by the colorful characters and harrowing situations he experienced firsthand as a reporter. He can often be found crafting his strong fictional characters with the help of an equally strong dry gin martini.
The following passage is from my novel, Secrets…Spies, Lies and Criminal Ties, Chapter 9, Page
63. The CID investigator meets the man whose life he saved during a Korean war battle. It
triggers hellish memories.
Book Excerpt
Secrets: Spies, Lies and Criminal Ties
Tony Villano had been with him on the Han River in Korea when the Chinese staged a massive night attack. The actual assault was preceded by an artillery bombardment that turned the ground into a thousand volcanoes, spewing dirt and rocks, and hurling bodies into the air. The air had become something Joey had never known before. It was a living fog enveloping him in its thick, oily, thunderous dust. It stung his skin and burned his nose with pungent drops of cordite. It resonated with every thump of death.
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