It's 1968, and CIA officer Peter Ivorson is in deep trouble. Transferred from Viet Nam aftera barely-failed assassination attempt left his nerves in tatters, Ivorson is hoping for an uneventful tour of duty in sleepy, small-town Vientiane. The secret war in Laos is in full swing, however, and Ivorson's new boss needs a big win to further his own career. He assigns Ivorson to steal the North Vietnamese diplomatic code, a mission at which both CIA and NSA have failed for years. In addition to the impossible assignment, the USAID personnel officer, whose job is to protect Ivorson's cover, can't...

It's l980. A civil war is under way in El Salvador. The landless peasantry has been taken over by Soviet-backed Communists. They are savagely opposed by the Army and landowners, whose death squads kill at will. Neither side likes the American solution: a fairly elected moderate government which will undertake land reform. Both sides, however, would like to kill the CIA's Chief of Operations, Peter Ivorson. As if that weren't bad enough, Ivorson is also caught in the middle of a spitting contest between his boss, the Chief of Station, and the U.S. Ambassador. In fact, about the only person in...