{"product_id":"blow-the-house-down-isbn-9781400098361","title":"Blow the House Down","description":"Former CIA operative Robert Baer pushes fiction to the absolute limit in this riveting and unnervingly plausible alternative history of 9\/11.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVeteran CIA officer Max Waller has long been obsessed with the abduction and murder of his Agency mentor. Though years of digging yield the name of a suspect—an Iranian math genius turned terrorist—the trail seems too cold to justify further effort. Then Max turns up a photograph of the man standing alongside Osama bin Laden and a mysterious westerner whose face has been cut out, feeding Max’s suspicion. When the first official to whom Max shows the photo winds up dead, the out-of-favor agent suddenly finds himself the target of dark forces within the intelligence community who are desperate to muzzle him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEluding a global surveillance net, Max—in the summer of 2001—begins tracking the spore of a complex conspiracy, meeting clandestinely with suicide bombers and Arab royalty and ultimately realizing the Iranian he’d sought for a decades-old crime is actually at the nexus of a terrifying plot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShowing off dazzling tradecraft and an array of richly textured backdrops, and filled with real names and events, \u003ci\u003eBlow the House Down\u003c\/i\u003e deftly balances fact and possibility to become the first great thriller to spring from the war on terrorism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlso available as a Random House AudioBook and an eBook\u003cb\u003eStunning Advance Praise for \u003ci\u003eBlow the House Down\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One of the finest espionage novels I’ve read since the end of the Cold War. Sharp, witty, and chilling; do yourself a big favor and read this.” —Nelson DeMille, author of \u003ci\u003eNight Fall\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Lion’s Game\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Moves at jet speed . . . a crackling spy thriller that will leave readers wondering how much may be true.” —David Wise, author of \u003ci\u003eSpy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Harrowing . . . pulses with the gritty details only a former intelligence officer could know. Watch out, Tom Clancy, there’s a new storyteller in town—and he’s actually lived the life he writes about!” —David Ignatius, author of \u003ci\u003eAgents of Innocence\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Unputdownable . . . Bob Baer has developed great characters and put them in situations that are devastatingly authentic.” —Joseph J. Trento, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Secret History of the CIA\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Lively . . . an insider’s tale about the one unforgivable sin of the intelligence world—not wanting to know.” —Thomas Powers, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of \u003ci\u003eIntelligence Wars\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Engrossing and challenging—how do you act when you know what really happened on September 11? Baer is so persuasive, one wonders whether he in fact did know. He certainly writes as if he did.” —William F. Buckley, Jr., author of \u003ci\u003eMiles Gone By\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eLast Call for Blackford Oakes\u003c\/i\u003eRobert Baer spent twenty years running agents from inside the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, operating against Hizballah, Al-Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations, and “was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East” (Seymour M. Hersh, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e). His memoir \u003ci\u003eSee No Evil\u003c\/i\u003e was a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestseller and inspired the movie Syriana starring George Clooney. He lives in Colorado.CHAPTER 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    New York City; June 21, 2001, 11:02 A.M.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Baton Rouge, Baton Rouge, this is Selma. How do you copy?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Five-by-five.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Baton Rouge, no movement. Che is still at his last.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Roger that, Selma. Maintain your current. Over.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The twelfth floor of the Deutsche Bank building on Park isn't a bad   perch on Midtown: close enough to the pavement to spot the   twenty-something MBAs, cell phones glued to their ears, bullshitting   about make-believe deals; just high enough to appreciate the grid,   the grandeur, how easy it would be to bring it all down with a dirty   nuke. But there I go talking shop again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    London's more cosmopolitan. Paris more tarted up. For stolen wealth   per square inch, there's no place like Geneva. But Manhattan is where   the real money is. Something like half the currency in the world   flows electronically through this city every day of the year. Close   your eyes and you can almost hear the trillions zinging around the   local cyberspace. All that money gives the city a sort of divine   energy, and Madison Avenue writes the Bible, selling crap no one can   afford to people who don't need it, from Edsels to Viagra and   Brazilian butt lifts. No wonder the jihadists go to bed every night   dreaming of pulverizing the place. (The fact that one in three Jews   in America lives here doesn't hurt, either.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Personally, I've had my fill of pulverized rubble. Beirut, Khobar,   Nairobi--I know the way it smells when it's still smoking and soaked   in blood, and how easy it is to make. Load a pickup with half-full   acetylene tanks, fertilizer, and fuel oil, and you can take down most   anything man-made that you can get under or inside.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I used to think spending the best parts of my life in the worst parts   of the world was worth something, but my employer saw things   otherwise. I'd reported one too many unpalatable truths, poked Foggy   Bottom in the eye one too many times, told my own seventh floor to   fuck off in one too many ways. \"Intelligence\" may be the snake oil we   sell, but the one absolutely inexcusable character flaw inside the   Beltway is candor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    After a quarter-century in the field, headquarters called me home   early and put me out to pasture in an office park near Tysons Corner.   The plan was to tie me up watching over a flock of retirees until I   shuffled off into my own sunset, but that couldn't happen until I hit   fifty, four years from now. In the meantime, I was working off a time   card: eight-to-five, no weekend duty, all the \"personal days\" I   needed. That's what I was doing right now: taking a Thursday to see   friends in Midtown. Another gaper in the capital of grit. Or so I   thought.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Hey, c'mere and have a look,\" I said, staring down at Park. I tried   to put a little urgency in my voice, enough to pry Chris Corsini away   from his high-performance, posture-fit Aeron chair and triple-wide   LCD screens. But Chris was a commodities trader. The only things that   got him excited were seasonal draws on oil inventories and his annual   bonus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"No, I'm serious. Come here and take a look at these two.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Chris sighed as he pushed himself to his feet. \"What's it now, Max,   King Kong on the loose again?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    That's what I liked about Chris: Ever since I'd rappelled down the   side of Sproul Hall into the dean's office, back in our undergraduate   days at Berkeley, he'd decided I was a headcase. But unlike a lot of   our classmates, he never held it against me. Maybe I helped balance   out the picture-perfect wife in Darien, the three way-above-average   pre-teens, and the metallic silver Porsche Carrera.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"There,\" I said, pointing him toward the corner of Forty-ninth and   Park, but Chris wasn't seeing what I was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Hmmm, let me think a minute.\" He was drumming his fingers on the   marble sill. \"Ah, the three smokers in front of the UBS building   across the street! Sky's falling! I'm moving everything into gold.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Take another look.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"At what, Max? Help me out here a little.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Those two,\" I said, directing his eye to a guy and a girl, maybe in   their late twenties. \"The hip pair in front of Quick and Reilly.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The guy was hip, all right: mini-dreds, black wife-beater, patched   black suede pants, Timberland boots, no socks or laces. The girl was   basic black, too--faded bodice and denim bottom with built-in   creases, carrier bag hanging from her shoulder--except for lavender   highlights and a pair of those Puma arsenic orange-and-powder-blue   sneakers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"You see something I don't?\" Chris asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Can't be sure. Maybe it's that they don't look very comfortable in   those uniforms, like they'd put them on for the first time today.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Chris hung by me a moment, made a kind of pitying cluck with his   tongue, then walked behind his desk and sat back down. \"Max, I'm   curious to know how you make it on your own in this world. You're   nuts.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Truth told, I had spotted the two of them earlier when I was walking   down Park. They were clearly interested in me, so I'd given them both   a hard look as I passed by, and they had turned instantly away.   That's about as telltale a sign as you're likely to get from static   surveillance, and nothing they were doing now was making me change my   mind. Every once in a while, the girl would glance over the guy's   shoulder, in the direction of the Deutsche Bank, and then say   something to him before turning back. The guy never stopped talking   into his cell phone. My bet? A walkie-talkie. Without a scanner,   though, I couldn't be sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Gotta hop,\" I told Chris, picking up my jacket. \"I need a favor, though.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"What about our lunch? I pushed people all over the place to make   room. You're like some goddamn senile cat, scampering off for no   reason at all.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was an old bitch. Bolting for no apparent reason is one of the   things I do best--that and manipulation, betrayal, and lying. Only   the highest professional standards. The irony is that Chris knew the   truest thing about me I'd ever told anyone. We were drunk junior   year, burning hemp, sitting on a bluff staring at the Golden Gate   Bridge, when he finally got around to asking me how my parents had   died.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I don't know,\" I told him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"How can you not know?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I don't know if they're dead.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Give me a break.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    And so I told him everything: Mother's two husbands, neither my   father; the grandfather who insisted I call him \"Sir\"; the bonds, the   coupons, the trust fund; all the houses we lived in as if Mother were   determined to book a season in every climate zone America had to   offer. How when I was thirteen, she had signed us up for an   archaeological expedition in Baluchistan, straddling the Pak-Iranian   border. How I'd woken up one morning two years later to find a note   tacked to the center tent pole: \"Max--I've left with Ravi [another   archaeologist--a real one--fifteen years her junior] to look at a   great dig. I shall be back in two weeks. Mother.\" Not \"Love, Mother.\"   Not \"Dear Max.\" Not anything like it. That was the last time I saw   her. Those two weeks had stretched to eighteen months before my aunt   learned from dear Mother that she'd left me at the end of the world   and booked a small tribe to come get me out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"What the fuck did you do while you waited?\" Chris wanted to know.   \"Live in a cave and eat bat shit?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Actually it wasn't too bad. A family took me in. They had a son my   age. We rode horses, played soccer. I learned Baluch.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"That's fucking bullshit.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    And there's the double irony: Of all the cock-and-bull tales I had   told Chris in the twenty-odd years since--the weird excuses for not   showing, the weirder ones for leaving early, the improbable   investment consulting firm that provided my Washington letterhead,   and on and on--I was sure the Baluchistan story was the one he least   believed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"C'mon, Chris,\" I said. He was back to swapping Nigerian crude.   \"This'll take ten minutes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"What in God's name are you talking about now?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"The favor. All you have to do is stand by the window and watch those two.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Why would I want to do that? You really are nuts.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Maybe. But my hunch is that they're tailing someone in this   building--maybe one of your colleagues; hell, maybe even your boss.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Chris looked at me as if he was deciding whether to call security.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"It happens, sweetheart. Honest. The husband's sitting on his ass at   home, laid off and stewed on midday martinis. Suddenly it dawns on   him that the mother of his children has hooked up with the mailroom   boy, so he calls in a private eye, and bingo! Fireworks hit the fan.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Yeah, sure.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"It's a fabulous business these days,\" I pushed it. \"Everyone's   screwing everyone.\" Rule Seven: Create the context before you risk a   truth. Rule Eight: Don't let the context twist in the wind. \"Or maybe   they're watching me.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Right, Max. And I'm Princess Di and you're Dodi whatever the hell   his name was. Drop the paranoid act. No one's following you.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Chances are he was right. (The why, for one thing, left a hole big   enough to drive the Pyramids through.) But high-octane paranoia is as   addictive as morphine and far more useful. There is no such thing as   an accident, no coincidence, no luck--they taught us that on day one   at the Farm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I'll never forget Joe Lynch, the course director, walking up behind   the podium that first morning and, without so much as a nod, asking,   \"Who ran a countersurveillance route coming here just now?\" All of us   wide-eyed career trainees looked around the auditorium, trying to   decide if Lynch was joking. The Farm is a maximum-security facility   with more deer than people. Only one road of any consequence runs   through it. You'd have to be Vin Diesel with brains to even get   inside the place. Still, Lynch had made his point: Always assume   you're being tailed even when you are sure you're not. It's the only   way to keep your edge, not get sloppy, not get caught.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I couldn't tell Chris any of that, of course. Like a lot of   friendships, ours depended on a certain degree of ambiguity,   augmented in my case--and maybe in his, too--with a healthy dose of   harmless virtual reality. A moral no-man's-land.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Listen,\" I said, \"I was seeing this girl, and . . .\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Chris bit, back on familiar ground once more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Bound to happen,\" he said with a shrug.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"What?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Hundreds of women. One Max. One of 'em was bound to get pissed off   enough to come after you.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Chris, listen--\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I mean it, Max. You really are like a goddamn alley cat. You slink   in and out of people's lives. Me, I don't mind that much. I'm not   looking to bed you down, but--\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"The point is . . .\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Remember that chewing-gum heiress who was stuck on you way back   when? Get it? Stuck on you. What did that last? Seven months? A   fucking world record. After Marissa.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In fact, I'd already asked Chris to be my best man when it dawned on   me that I liked having sex with the heiress more than I liked her,   just about the same time she realized that she preferred the idea of   me to me in person.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Youthful indiscretions,\" I said. I needed to get Chris back on   track. \"Lookit, this little piece of work is different. Very   vindictive. Worse, she's got the money to indulge her anger.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"What's her name?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Name? Volunteer nothing, and never give up a detail you absolutely   don't have to.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I cut her off cold,\" I said. \"No five stages of grief with this one.   Just checked out. Left her steaming. I wouldn't put it past her to   put a tail on me, or worse. Chris, I could use a little help here.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Chris turned serious again. \"Come on, Max, we're too old for this.   I've got work to do. You can watch the watchers yourself.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"That's precisely what I can't do. If I do something stupid like walk   out of here and look over my shoulder, bend over to tie my shoe, or   stare into a display window to see what's going on behind me, they'll   know I spotted them.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"So? Isn't that the point?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Yeah, you do that and whoever is running this little show will bring   in a new team I won't spot. It's the way these things work.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Chris wasn't buying into it, but he hadn't said no. It was up to me   to close the deal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Trust me,\" I told him, \"this chick is totally unzipped, a psycho.   She'll do me harm given the chance. I gotta know sooner rather than   later whether she's got a tail on me.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I picked Chris's cell phone up off the desk, poked my cell number   into it, and put it back down in front of him. \"See this little   button with the green telephone on it? Push that in ten and tell me   what happens. That's all you have to do.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Chris tapped his fingers on the desk, adjusted his neck in his   starched white collar, shot his wrist out from an equally starched   and beautiful tailored French cuff, and gave his watch a good   looking-over.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Okay, okay. But you know, Max, it's not easy having you as a friend.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He rolled his wrist a few more times just to make sure I didn't miss   what was wrapped around it. The watch looked as if it had cost enough   to feed an entire Afghan village for years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"A new toy, eh?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"A Breitling.\" He was beaming. \"It's got a micro-transmitter in it   that works anywhere in the world.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"In case you get kidnapped?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"No, asshole, I bought it for sailing.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I laughed. \"Yeah, just the ticket next time you're blown out of Long   Island Sound and end up lost in the Azores.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"One thing, Max. How do you know that that's the way these things work?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"What things?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Not tipping off a tail.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    There was something new in Chris's voice--a genuine curiosity. Maybe   he was seeing me for the first time as I was, not as he wanted me to   be. Maybe he was thinking about dumping his own little side plate. At   this point, I didn't care.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Some guy I met in a bar,\" I said. \"He told me all about it.\"New York Times Bestselling Author","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304077611237,"sku":"NP9781400098361","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400098361.jpg?v=1767722825","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/blow-the-house-down-isbn-9781400098361","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}