Böcker av Gene Coyle

Everybody liesespecially in wartime. Individuals do it for personal advantage. Governments do it for political and strategic reasons. General Donovan, the director of the US militarys Office of Strategic Services sends officer Charles Worthington in early 1944 to open a direct liaison relationship between the OSS and the Soviets civilian intelligence service, the NKVD. The exchange program turns out to be a waste of time, but then Charles receives a discreet offer from an NKVD official. He claims to have information about NKVD penetrations within a secret American weapons program called the Manhattan Project, which is supposedly developing something called an atomic bomb. In return, the Russian wants to be smuggled to America to begin a new life. His life is also complicated by his growing fondness for an attractive female employee at the British embassy in Moscow, efforts by various Russian informants around him, and the harsh Russian winter. In the end, he must decide whether he will do what is best for himself or best for America.

CIA officer Shawn Reilly recruits foreign officials to spy for the United States. He thinks of his job as selling dreams to people who need money, need their egos stroked or want revenge on their bosses or government. After spending many years in the hellholes of the world, he has wound up in the twilight of his career in Lisbon, Portugal where he faces a "by the book" boss, a crumbling marriage and Boris, the chief of the Russian intelligence service in Portugal who is likewise targeting Shawn. At the same time, the Libyan intelligence service is trying to lure a Central Asian chemical weapons specialist to Libya and the Russian service is on the tail of the Kazak scientist. Boris' attractive daughter, visiting from Moscow, is swept up in the plots within plots, where as in the real world of espionage, all is not necessarily as it first appears. The various threads of intrigue come together in Lisbon. In addition to performing his professional duties Shawn is forced to face the question for an aging spy of just what really matters in life - one's duty or love. The Dream Merchant of Lisbon goes into the minds of the major players to explore the psychology of espionage, based on the author's true life experiences in that shadowy world.