Revenge of the Kremlin (A Malko Linge Novel)

Product Description

In this gripping, tightly plotted tale of espionage, Malko Linge investigates the suspicious death of a Russian oligarch in London.
 
Boris Berezovsky is living in exile in London to avoid the wrath of Vladimir Putin. One morning, the unlucky oligarch is found dead in his bathroom, an apparent suicide.
 
Their suspicions aroused, MI5 opens an investigation—but Prime Minister David Cameron orders the case closed. Alarmed at the renewal of Russian Cold War tricks and Moscow’s increasingly close ties to London, the CIA dispatches Malko Linge to investigate Berezovsky’s death and the British cover-up. With help from an alluring former CIA handler, Malko dives into the search for hard evidence of the Kremlin’s involvement in the affair—putting himself directly in the crosshairs of the world’s most efficient assassins.

Review

Praise for Gérard de Villiers 

“Ripped from the headlines. . . . His books tell unvarnished truths that many prefer to ignore.” —
The Wall Street Journal

“De Villiers’ books are ahead of the news and sometimes even ahead of events themselves.”—
The New York Times Magazine

About the Author

Gérard de Villiers (1929–2013) is the most popular writer of spy thrillers in French history. His two-hundred-odd books about the adventures of Austrian nobleman and freelance CIA operative Malko Linge have sold millions of copies.

Malko Linge, who first appeared in 1965, has often been compared to Ian Fleming’s hero James Bond. The two secret agents share a taste for gunplay and kinky sex, but de Villiers was a journalist at heart, and his books are based on constant travel and reporting in dozens of countries.
On several occasions de Villiers was even ahead of the news. His 1980 novel had Islamists killing President Anwar el-Sādāt of Egypt a year before the event took place.
The Madmen of Benghazi described CIA involvement in Libya long before the 2012 attack on the Benghazi compound.
Chaos in Kabul vividly reflected the upheaval in Afghanistan.
Revenge of the Kremlin lays the assassination of an exiled Russian oligarch in 2013 directly at the feet of President Vladimir Putin

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpted from the prologue

PROLOGUE

Moscow,

Spring 2013

 
Rem Tolkachev was so moved, his eyes were moist with tears.

He reread Vladimir Putin’s decree—which an orderly had hand-delivered to his little Korpus No. 14 office in the south wing of the Kremlin—for the third time.

The president’s order created a special unit within the GRU—the military intelligence service—charged with resolving “sensitive situations.” Its members were authorized to travel to any country in the world to secretly kill anyone the Kremlin saw as a political or economic adversary, even if they weren’t under official sanction from the Russian government.

It was the return of SMERSH, the organization that assassinated regime opponents in the days of the Soviet Union.

This was a task to which Tolkachev had devoted years of effort, drawing on unlimited resources and the support of Russia’s various security agencies. President Putin was now giving official status to his discreet yet extremely useful role. The old spymaster took no personal pride in this, and he would continue to operate in the shadows, but now he felt imbued with a nearly divine sense of mission.

He mentally blessed Vladimir Vladimirovich, and promised to go to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior to pray for him.

This decree was the final nail in the coffin of the despised Boris Yeltsin, who had dismantled whole swaths of the Soviet Union. Life would now go back to the way it was, thought Tolkachev, with “vertical power” again ruling the country. It would be the USSR without communism, for which no one had any more use. Power would be wielded with an iron fist and any remaining opponents would soon be brought to heel.

For a few moments, Tolkachev almost felt that his little office shared the so