Puppets of Washington

Secrecy, traps, and manipulation at a Secret Service level are used to cover the shooting of Talya Kartz and on the other hand to help the man who pulled the trigger, agent Samuel Meshullam, run away through half the world. Where are all these ploys and maneuvers coming from? Meanwhile, the CIA tries hard to save their collective asses by covering up an operation that saw kilos of drugs exchanged for US faulty armaments from a Texas warehouse, destined to land in the hands of the Israeli forces in Gaza.

Talya and Samuel have to find a man - the one they call the Puppeteer. They know it is the only way for them to clear their names from the accusation of treason against the State of Israel that has pursued them for nearly two years now. Although Mossad made sure they were cleared of the accusation during a recent trial in Washington, D.C., the director of the Israeli agency still has some doubts about Talya and Samuel's innocence. David Bernstein doesn't like coincidences.

After someone close dies and a divorce hits hard on Talya's life, she needs a change, and leaving Australia for his natal Vancouver seems enough. But her new employer, Carmine Resources, moves her overseas to Mali to investigate why the $500,000 sent to their agent, Amadou Savoi, to get licenses and contracts for a new gold mine seems somehow to be going down the drain.

The restless chase is coming to an end, but not before all the mysteries around Amadou Savoi, Richard Gilman, and Carmine are solved. All the pieces are coming together. Now they are getting closer to the puppeteer, the closer they get the more dangerous it becomes. The puppeteer is prepared to stop them at any cost.

Talya's lawyer, Hassan, is murdered in front of her eyes in Dakar. The message is clear: stop meddling in the drug trafficking operation. She leaves Africa devastated and goes back home, but someone decides it's time for Talya to start the chess game. CIA and CSIS want her to play as bait to put their hands on some French drug lord, but she doesn't like to play the pawn; she will play by her own rules and she will find herself thrown into the most horrendous nightmare ever.

Talya has too many questions still to be answered. She hopes to find the truth at the Hotel de Crillon in Paris. The Puppeteer is playing hide-and-seek, and he's going to show himself in person just for the sake of the game. There are some CIA reports about the arms trafficking between the United States and Israel, upon which CSIS is founding its investigations. Those sheets will prove to be forged, but the first domino has already fallen, and there's no way to stop the others.