Professor and secret government analyst Ian Sanderson's bad day gets worse when he arrives home one miserable November evening to find an apparently incriminating photograph in a FedEx envelope in his doorway, followed by increasingly threatening photographs over the next two or three weeks. It isn't just Ian being set up: his partner, Randy, a lieutenant colonel working on a top-secret Pentagon project, is also at risk. Someone obviously wants something, but what? And from whom?<br><br> Soon, a mysterious caller demands that Randy disclose information about the project he's been working on. When he refuses, Ian's and Randy's sons, David and Paul, are kidnapped from an Amtrak passenger train. Resourceful and intelligent, the boys manage to escape-only to find themselves lost and alone in a remote wilderness. With time running out, can Ian and Randy track down their blackmailers? Or will the man known only as The Broker claim another set of victims?

The Burdens of Truth

“Babe, this guy is a newly appointed one-star general. At this stage of his career, he’s not gonna do much more than wipe his butt without going through channels and asking permission from somebody.”


“Only a little. I know the type—he’s gonna be what we refer to in the army as a ‘by the book’ clown. Believe me, his future career hangs on the success of this project, and he knows it.”


BY THE TIME I got home Friday, the tension was beginning to get to me, and I was wound up tightly. The phone rang as I was hanging my suit in the closet. Randy wasn’t home yet, so I answered it. “Have you thought things over, doc?” my unknown caller said.


“There’s nothing to think over. The answer is no.”


“That’s too bad,” he said. “Those Jesuits you work for are going to love seeing a certain picture of two naked men.”


“Yeah, they’ll probably use it as jerk-off material. Good for them.”


Chapter 18