Face of the Mule

He could become anyone. Then they made him no one.

April 1945. On a rain-swept airstrip in occupied Denmark, a German transport is loaded with twenty-two crates of ancient gold, the legendary Treasure of Priam, dug from the ruins of Troy. The aircraft takes off into the storm and is never seen again. Only the navigator knows where it was going, and he takes the secret behind the Iron Curtain for the rest of his life.

Seventy years later, CIA officer Jonathan « Buck » Buckley is the best mule the Agency has ever had: a master of disguise who can wear another man’s face, hands, and history, walk a defector out of any country on earth, and vanish before anyone knows he was there. In 2014 he is sent to Minsk to bring out a truck driver who claims to know where that aircraft went down. Buck is told the job is about a virus. He is told a great many things.

The operation is betrayed. Buck is shot, captured, and buried alive in a Belarusian prison while Langley quietly writes him off as dead.

Twelve years later, a man calling himself Roebuck runs a discreet import business on the waterfront in Newport Beach, California, with a team of specialists who help wealthy clients move things out of places they cannot leave. A job in Buenos Aires puts him back on the trail of the gold, and of the secret that cost him everything: a lethal program called Lot 17, a young researcher who paid with her life for finding it, and a powerful CIA veteran who is about to be confirmed by the United States Senate.

Buck Buckley has one advantage. Everyone who matters thinks he is dead. And he can be anyone he wants.

Smart, propulsive, and full of reversals, Face of the Mule is an international espionage thriller that runs from the last days of the Second World War to Johannesburg, Minsk, Buenos Aires, and Washington, D.C. It is the first Buck Buckley novel, and his story continues in Great Wall.

From Stephen A. Joyce, an attorney, screenwriter, and film producer with more than thirty years in the entertainment business, adapted from his original screenplay.

Perfect for readers who love: CIA spy thrillers; lost Nazi gold and treasure hunts; master-of-disguise heroes; government conspiracy and betrayal; revenge thrillers; and international action with a historical mystery at its heart.