Spy-Hunters #8

When U.S. Border Patrol officers Winthrop and Carl stumble upon an illegal crossing at the Rio Grande, they uncover far more than simple smuggling—a ruthless operative named Señor Perez is using desperate Mexican workers as pawns in a Soviet espionage scheme to intercept top-secret rocket warheads falling from the White Sands testing range. As Winthrop brings his suspicions to the Counter-Espionage Bureau, he realizes the spy ring's cunning relies on the trust these poor laborers place in their own kind, setting him on a dangerous path to investigate and expose the plot before America's defense secrets fall into enemy hands.

In 1950, espionage ace Jonathan Kent investigates the impossible: how an atomic scientist's burned notes on plutonium fission were perfectly reproduced and passed to enemy agents. His search for answers leads from the Columbia Institute of Technology to a tangle of suspects including the scientist himself, his loyal secretary Marta Perez, and a mysterious jeweler—each with secrets that complicate the case. Kent must uncover whether forgery, espionage, or something far cleverer is at work before classified atomic research falls into the wrong hands.

During the First World War, Allied spy Louise de Bettignies infiltrates German-occupied Lille to establish a clandestine intelligence network, using her wits and access to forged documents to move through enemy territory. When she attempts to deliver crucial reports about German troop movements to British headquarters, she faces an unexpected checkpoint commanded by Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria—and must rely on a chance encounter from years past to talk her way through. Based on a true story of courage that reportedly earned the admiration of the German high command itself.

When spies steal Professor Wald's dangerous pulverizer—a weapon that can disintegrate steel, concrete, and worse with sonic waves—intelligence agent Martin Simpson must track down the device before the enemy demonstrates its devastating power on America's cities. Using the weapon's need to mask its siren sound as a clue, Simpson plots to intercept the spies before they can strike again. This 1950 spy thriller explores the lengths a counter-espionage agent will go to recover a doomsday device and stop a ruthless operation.

Elizabeth Van Lew, a refined Southern aristocrat, uses her reputation as the eccentric "Crazy Bet" to conduct espionage for the Union during the Civil War—gathering intelligence on Confederate movements while her neighbors assume her abolitionist sympathies are mere madness. She trains a freed slave, Mary Elizabeth Bowser, to become a spy embedded in President Jefferson Davis's own household, and shelters escaped Union prisoners in a secret chamber hidden within her Richmond home. A true account of how one woman's cunning and conviction made her one of the war's most effective intelligence operatives.