In this riveting thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Exile, a bloodbath on home soil launches one man into a world-spanning hunt for answers-revealing implications for the United States that are too terrible to imagine-and too real to ignore . . .
Finally settling into a peaceful life after more than a decade on the deadly front lines of the war on terror, Ryan Kealey believes he's put danger behind him-and some of his demons to rest. But his calm is shattered when he's swept into a highly organized and merciless terror attack during a charity gala in downtown Baltimore.
Dozens are dead and critically injured, including the wife of CIA Deputy Director John Harper, whose investigation of the ambush is hampered by suspicious foot-dragging from the CIA and other agencies. With normal channels obstructed, Harper turns Kealey, the one man with the resources, expertise-and freedom from government interference-to pursue the awful truth.
Following a string of secrets and violence, Kealey blazes a trail from the confines of a federal Supermax facility to the remote edge of Eastern Europe, from the innermost chambers of government and big business to the dimmest reaches of the human psyche, forced to match wits with an old foe-and a new nemesis. Slowly, Kealey unspools an unimaginable conspiracy that suggests America may in fact be its own worst enemy.
With page after page of unrelenting action and explosive revelations, The Operative blends political deception and global intrigue at their highest levels with covert psychological manipulations at their deepest and most devastating.
