Aiken in check: a spy game novel - michael frost beckner

In 1959, Castro took the vital step to nationalize the bat guano caves.

and ban Santa Claus.

The Cuban DI has always beaten us, Russell.

To save the love of your life, youll be required to sacrifice your country.

Nina is my country now.

Then go, but if you dont bring your best game, you will have sacrificed both your lives, and theyll rape and torture Nina out of spite before they put a bullet in her skull.

The Hotel Florida, Havana.

Christmas Eve.

Hapless but ever-striving CIA lawyer Russell Aiken defects to Fidel Castros Cuba.

Unlucky in love as he is at treason, Aiken is in the unenviable position of having to betray his country to save the life of Nina Estrada, his one true love.

Nina: met, loved, and lost on an LSD-fueled one-night stand in 1978.

Years later, revealed as Nathan Muirs asset hidden from Aiken over two decades, the pair reunite at the old spymasters wake.

But their chance at a happily ever after is dashed when Nina is abducted by Cuban agents, and Aiken must infiltrate Havana to trade his life for hers.

As Aikens love-letter confession divulges secrets past, present, and yet to come, the untested Amy Kim works inside the Office of Technical Service to create a device to neutralize Aikens usefulness to Cuba.

But with Aikens treason exposing the CIAs top spy in Castros inner circle, deadly events in Cuba and Venezuela are discovered to share a hidden connection to Bishop and Muir, and the final truth behind Bishops capture Spy Game draws Muirs deadliest enemy from the shadows.

The one Langley spymaster Muir was unable to beat in his lifetime, the man who engineered the destruction of Bishop and Muirs relationship, Silas Kingston is part of a CIA within the CIA and inside Russias former KGB known as KALEIDOSCOPE.

With Aiken in Check, Beckner brings full circle the existential toll the spy game takes on its players.

From the deadly costs of lives lived as lies in Muirs Gambit, to the impact lifelong deceit has on the perception of identity portrayed in Bishops Endgame, this final novel in the Aiken Trilogy exposes how those two conditions, fraudulence and false identity, deconstruct a spys primary objective: the exchange of information.

which just so happens to be the basic building block of reality.

In a world where deception piles upon deception, will Aiken lose all he loves and honors, or will he assume Muirs mantle to become grandmaster of the Spy Game?.