
Black Gambit
By Eric Clark
‘Solzhenitsyn had gone. Who next?’
Moscow, at the height of Cold War tensions. The faceless men of the KGB have come for Alexandrai Zorin, a brilliant scientist, but like Sakharov, like Solzhenitsyn, a dissident. He now faces the horrors of interrogation in Lubyanka prison.
In Washington there is a man called Allen Scott, whose job is not defined anywhere. In the Department’s directory he is described as ‘special assistant to the Secretary of State.’
He is, in fact, Henry Kissinger’s contact with the world. And when Scott and his team of advisers decide it would make a brilliant publicity coup against the USSR to break Zorin out of Russia, they set in motion a series of events which no one can stop – except the President himself.
The plan is simple: find someone who can double for Zorin and sneak Zorin out of Russia from under the noses of the KGB.
And in Folsom Prison, California, the new day begins for John Parker at 5.30 a.m., the same as any other day. He has been in prison for seven years. His crime: killing his wife and her lover. He’ll run any risk for freedom and the chance of seeing his daughter again.
The name of the game is international diplomacy; and it is a game in which the individual is an expendable pawn on a chess board, just as long as the cynical politicians who decide the moves can see some advantage for themselves in the sacrifice of others.
Eric Clark’s Black Gambit is a gripping and thrilling story of high-stakes deception and espionage, as well as an authentic account of the moves played by both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Eric Clark is an investigative journalist: according to then Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, his Observer disclosures about gambling led to the decision to change Britain’s gaming laws. He has also written four successful thrillers, among them Black Gambit and Chinese Burn.