PROLOGUE

The cold breeze swept across the plain, carrying the butterfly on its drafts. The remarkable insect flitted about, climbing, diving, arcing high and low. It was a beautiful specimen, its wings colored a vivid yellow with a latticework of black, and unlike any in the region. It had an unusual name, too: Papilio panoptes.

The butterfly flew over the custodial road, over the electrified security fence, and over the rolls of barbed wire. Beyond the fence lay a field of wildflowers, stunning in their variety and color. There were no structures anywhere to be seen: no houses, no barns, no buildings of any type. Only the mounds of freshly impacted soil, barely distinguishable beneath the flower canopy, gave evidence of the recently completed work.

Despite its long voyage, the butterfly ignored the flowers. It did not seek their richly scented pollen or feast on their sweet nectar. Instead, it chose to fly higher, seeming to gain its sustenance from the air itself.

And there it stayed, a shimmering yellow flag against the pale winter sky. It did not land on a lavender bush to rest. It did not drink from any of the rushing streams that descended from the harsh, majestic mountains and ran across the fertile grasslands. In fact, never once did it venture outside the fence's precisely established one-square-kilometer perimeter. Content to hover over the colorful fields, it flew back and forth, day after day, night after night, never eating, never drinking, never resting.

After seven days, a fierce wind, the nashi, visited from the north.The wind roared down the mountain passes and hurtled across the plains, gathering velocity and force and pummeling everything in its path. The butterfly could not fight the relentless drafts. Its circuits inside the perimeter had left it worn and vulnerable. A swirling gust picked it up, spun it round, and dashed it to the ground, shattering its fragile body.

A guard patrolling the custodial road caught the flash of yellow lying in the dirt and stopped his jeep. He approached cautiously, kneeling in the ankle-deep grass. It was not like any butterfly he had seen before. First of all, it was larger. Its wings were rigid, with jagged bits of a paperthin metal protruding from the silken skin. The fuzzy thorax was split in two and connected by a green wire. Mystified, he picked it up and examined it. Like all those who worked at the facility, he was first and foremost an engineer, and only reluctantly a soldier. What he saw left him shaken.

Inside the thorax was an aluminum-cased battery no bigger than a grain of rice, and attached to it, a microwave transmitter. Using his thumbnail, he sheared away the antennae's skin to reveal a cluster of fiber-optic cables, thin as human hair.

No, he argued to himself. It could not be. Not so soon.

Suddenly, he was running back to the jeep. Words tore through his mind. Explanations. Theories. None made sense. An exposed stone caught his foot and he crashed to the ground. Clambering to his feet, he hurried toward the jeep. Every minute was vital.

His hand shook as he radioed his superiors.

"They have found us."


1

Jonathan Ransom knocked the ice from his goggles and stared up at the sky. If this gets any worse, he thought to himself, we're going to be in trouble. The snow was falling harder. A snarling wind snapped ice and grit against his cheek. The craggy, familiar peaks that ringed the high alpine valley had disappeared behind an armada of threatening clouds.

He lifted one ski, then the next, leaning forward as he climbed the slope. Nylon sealskins attached to the underside of...

 

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"Rules of Deception packs a wallop. Christopher Reich is at the top of his game."

 

"Rules of Deception is an ingenious thriller set credibly in the shadowy world of international espionage. This one has it all: well-drawn characters, wonderful writing, exotic settings, and a high-tech terrorist plot that will keep you breathlessly racing along right through its electrifying climax."

 

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"Rules of Deception delivers pure suspense, intrigue, and adventure from its first page to its last. Christopher Reich is the master of the espionage thriller for the twenty-first century."

 

"Fast-paced and intriguing, Rules of Deception is a great international thriller full of twists and turns that kept me guessing to the very end. A very enjoyable read."

 

"Once again, Chris Reich is firing on all cylinders. Rules of Deception is a supple, elegant thriller with a beguiling sophistication. Reich catches the reader on page one and utterly commands you to finish through a plot that carries triumphantly from one thrilling climax to another. He certainly knows how to manipulate the reader in exciting ways, and he's an expert (as his award-winning The Patriots Club proved) in creating a riveting imagined world so real you wonder if it was actually imagined."

 

"Rules of Deception is an intense, impossible-to-put down spy novel--like Robert Ludlum at his very best."

 

CHRISTOPHER REICH is the New York Times bestselling author of Numbered Account and The Patriots Club, the latter of which won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel in 2006. He lives in Southern California with his wife and...

Rules of Deception by Christopher Reich
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