“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 13, Page
95. Looks can be deceiving. The young man was a youth in appearance, but it was clear to the
FBI special agents that in some ways he was old, very old. He had suffered too much pain and
held too many secrets.
Book Excerpt
Secrets: Spies, Lies and Criminal Ties
Though Laurens and Conrad had seen a picture of him, they were surprised at just how young he looked. He appeared more like a tall, slender teenager than a 23-year-old Ph.D. from MIT. His army fatigues appeared far too large for his body. When he rose to greet them, he demonstrated the physical awkwardness of boys whose coordination has not yet caught up to their growing limbs. Yet his deep brown eyes seem filled with the depth of a much older man. Conrad had the sense that Wade had seen and felt too much pain for someone so young.
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