The year is 1962. John Glenn is in orbit, Audrey Hepburn is breakfasting outside Tiffany's, and Elvis is recording "Bossa Nova Baby." The Gibson and Détente are both in fashion, and both are served icy cold. And in the Foreigners' Quarter of Istanbul, a middle-aged Dutch spy has just met a fiery death.

Enter Mallory and Morse. Jack Mallory is a laconic ex-soldier from the oilfields of CorpusChristi. Laura Morse is a frostily beautiful Boston Brahmin adept at Floating Hand karate. Both are top operatives for the Consultancy, a shadowy covert-services network run by the enigmatic British ex-commando known as Gray. The Consultancy exists to execute those missions too dangerous or too dirty for the world's conventional intelligence agencies. The murdered man was their friend and colleague, and Gray has ordered them to take revenge.

It won't be easy. All signs point to athlete-turned-arms-dealer Anton Rauth, a man of vast means, refined tastes, and questionable sanity, currently holed up in his HQ inside an extinct South Seas volcano. His minions include two battle-hardened ex-GRU assassins: the dour Sasha Kurski and the genially murderous Piotr Nemerov, both rigorously trained and utterly remorseless. It's Mallory's job to let himself be captured. It's Laura's job to help him fight his way free again. With what they learn, they must penetrate the "nightclub" called Club Europa and then -- armed with little but scuba gear and nerve -- Rauth's island fortress itself.

But as they know all too well, Rauth is expecting them. He may even have factored them into his plans. And his plans -- for both Mallory and America -- are literally earthshaking ...

Into the Volcano is an homage to James Bond, Modesty Blaise, and the golden age of the spy thriller, a time when America was more innocent and its enemies possessed a dash of Space Age style. It takes the reader from bustling New York to steamy Istanbul, from Cannes' balmy breezes to the island known as the Dragon's Throne, and at last into the molten heart of the Cold War.

Into the Volcano

A Mallory & Morse Novel of EspionageBy Devoe, Forrest

HarperCollins Publishers

ISBN: 0060723769

Chapter One

On Seraglio Point

There's nothing worse than a summer cold, and van Vliet had areal beauty. Brimming eyes, swampy sinuses, clogged ears, anda raw throat that tasted of pennies; he'd had the lot since thebeginning of May. Strolling down the esplanade, he couldn't smellthe harbor scents of diesel exhaust and rope, or the toasted newcorn from the vendors' carts. He couldn't hear the rush of traffic onthe Marmara Highway. The sun glittering on the harbor seemed toshine for the benefit of others, for the old freighters and new pleasurecraft, for the tourists in their toucan-hued clothes, for the Greeksailors and Stambouline wharfmen, as agile and purposeful as cats.Beside him, the cypresses of Seraglio Point climbed away into theflat blue sky, and behind them, the spires of the Blue Mosqueretreated through the bright wet air into a splendid Byzantine past.Istanbul was splendid, all right, all twenty-five centuries' worth of it,and had twice been the center of the civilized world, but at that moment it seemed to have no place for a sweaty,middle-aged Dutchspy who hadn't been able to taste his food for a month.

Just van Vliet was a big, sandy-haired man with a projecting,somewhat shapeless jaw. He moved with the sleepy gait of atrained fighter, and the Turks gave him a respectfully wide berth ashe ambled along the waterfront. He paused by a kiosk near thedocks and scanned the front page of the day's International HeraldTribune, which the owner always displayed behind a dusty sheet ofglass. An Air France 707 had crashed on takeoff. De Gaulleextended his condolences. Another shooting along the Berlin Wall.Khruschev had charged the West with "provocation." The PathetLao had taken two more hostages. U Thant had called high-altitudeA-bomb tests "the manifestation of a dangerous psychosis." ScottCarpenter's Mercury capsule had overshot its target by two hundredfifty miles. So far 1962 hadn't been much of a year for anyone,except maybe the New York Yankees, who seemed to be on theirway to back-to-back championships.

Van Vliet walked over to the balustrade, leaned his elbows on therailing, and stared out at the Asian Side.

He tried to be happy for the Yankees.

Eight years ago van Vliet had been a midlevel desk officer in theBinnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst, the Dutch Internal Security Service.Neither his colleagues nor his wife had expected much of him.Then his wife had left, and he'd seen how right she was to try againfor something better. He'd said good-bye himself: to marriage, towomen, and to Groningen. He'd let Gray recruit him for the Consultancy-- until then, he'd never been quite sure that the Consultancyactually existed -- and undergone six months' retraining in the pinebarrens of New Jersey. The Jersey woods had been thick with pitchpines and red chokeberries. Van Vliet had been happy there. He'dloved the drills, unarmed and armed, and the hazards course, andthe nightly seminars on tradecraft. He'd loved the orderliness andrigor of his days. For a while, he thought he'd actually managed to change his luck. But back in the field, once again he'd been -- whatdid the Americans say?

A day late and a dollar short.

Three years ago Gray had asked him to head the Consultancy'sIstanbul station. Van Vliet had known what the posting meant.Istanbul had become a political backwater, a place to tuck awaymen who weren't quite up to the mark.Van Vliet lacked, and knewhe lacked, the inner strictness no good agent was without. He wasprey to the weary twilit state in which the world seems too muchtrouble, to the drifting depression that is as deadly to the field operativeas a rain of bullets.

The mouth of the Bosphorus lay before him like a sheet of oiledtin.To his right was the Sea of Marmara, an endless expanse of glaringgray water. It was dotted from the esplanade to the horizon withships of every size, like a Renaissance exercise in one-point perspective,and grew bluer as it moved away from the city. To his left wasthe Golden Horn, and across it was Beyoglu, the foreigners' quarterwhere van Vliet had his office and flat. Beyoglu was a jumble of redroofedbuildings topped by the conical mass of the Galata Tower. Atthe base of the tower, one could just see the edge of a massive concretehulk. Club Europa. It brought his mind back to his job.Accordingto the papers, when completed Club Europa would be Turkey'sbiggest discotheque, with a revolving tempered-glass dance floor, atwenty-meter indoor fountain, and a rooftop heliport for VIP guests.

A nightclub with a heliport.

Van Vliet swallowed, hearing a series of clicks at the hinges of hisjaw.After this many years in the business, he hoped he knew a frontoperation when he saw one. Club Europa was dirty, had to be. Buthe'd run it back every way he knew -- financing, politicos, construction,even the architects -- and hadn't come up with so much as awell-formed suspicion to take to Gray. He pulled out a sodden handkerchiefand blew his nose, setting off a hellish squealing in one ear.He thought, for some reason, of his ex-wife's hands. They'd had an abrupt, startled way of moving -- Helene herself always had a startledlook. She'd been scanty and pale, and even if she'd been a man,he wouldn't have found her very attractive. But he'd loved her, andfor a while, she'd loved him, too.When he'd had a cold, she'd madehim hot tomato soup.

He sighed, boosted himself off the balustrade, and turned towardhome.

The heat was stifling as he crossed the asphalt apron of theEminönu docks and turned onto the Galata Bridge. A new tan Cadillacnearly grazed him with its tailfins ...

Continues...

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