But what has become of Mr. Sinclair since the bloodshed in the Hart Office Building last month? Intelligence sources speculate that he may have been killed, but refuse to comment on the record. Five days after the event, Mr. Sinclair’s daughter, Molly, and her husband, Benjamin Ellison, were declared legally dead, after the small craft they were sailing off Cape Cod was discovered to have capsized. Intelligence sources would not confirm allegations that the couple, like Mr. Sinclair, were murdered. The fate of the three remains a mystery.
A Capitol Hill security spokesman stated recently that Ms. Sinclair was believed to have entered the hearing room through a loading dock beneath the building by posing as a food deliverywoman. The spokesman stated that Ms. Sinclair had obtained blueprints of the Hart Office Building and was familiar with them.
German Plot Revealed
The would-be assailant, a former East German citizen identified as Josef Peters, was reported to be an ex-employee of the former East German secret intelligence service, the Stasi. According to intelligence sources, Peters was the true identity of a well-known journalist named Miles Preston, who claimed to be a resident of Great Britain. The place of birth listed on Miles Preston’s passport is Bristol, England, but Bristol city officials have been unable to locate any birth record of a Miles Preston. Little is known about Josef Peters at the present time.
As for Alexander Truslow, Mr. Sinclair’s successor as Director of Central Intelligence, he remains in prison awaiting his treason trial in Washington Superior Court next month. The firm which he founded, Truslow Associates, Inc., has been charged with complicity in Mr. Truslow’s alleged treason, and has been shut down by government authorities pending further resolution of the matter.
The German government of Chancellor Wilhelm Vogel has resigned, and the heads of six German corporations, most prominent among them Gerhard Stoessel, the chairman of the Neue Welt real estate holding firm based in Munich, have been indicted and are facing trial.
Mr. Sinclair had charged that, with the assistance of CIA Director Truslow, Chancellor Vogel and his backers engineered this fall’s German stock market crash in order to gain election, after which they planned a corporate coup d’état of the German government and the establishment of hegemony over Europe. Whatever the truth of the Sinclair revelations, news of the Truslow-Vogel plot shook world governments and markets.
Yet it is still not known whether we have learned the entire story of the CIA conspiracy.
A Packet of Documents
Last week this reporter received by registered mail a packet of documents prepared and sent by a former CIA officer, James Tobias Thompson III, who died in an accident in his home several days before the events in Washington.
The documents appear to bolster Mr. Sinclair’s claims about Mr. Truslow’s illegal dealings with the German consortium.
But the package, according to postal authorities, appears to have been tampered with. One document referred to in Mr. Thompson’s cover letter concerned a CIA covert program called the “Oracle Project.”
That document, however, was missing from Mr. Thompson’s package. CIA spokesmen deny the existence of any such covert program.
Translated from Tribuno de Siena, p. 22
PUBLIC NOTICE
The Siena City Council welcomes with pleasure the establishment of the Crowell Clinic in the town of Costafabbri, in the Comune of Siena. The Crowell Clinic, a free medical clinic for children, is being run under the guidance of three new arrivals to the Siena area from the United States: Mr. Alan Crowell; his wife, Dr. Carol Crowell, who has an infant daughter, and Dr. Crowell’s father, Richard Hale.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although the Oracle Project is fictional, this story is based on a number of intriguing, little-known historical facts. That a fortune in Soviet gold remains missing to this day is, according to reliable sources, a matter of record in international intelligence and finance circles. And the interest of the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense, and Soviet intelligence in psychic research has long been documented.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joseph Finder is the New York Times bestselling author of ten previous novels, including Vanished and Buried Secrets. Finder’s international bestseller Killer Instinct won ITW’s Thriller Award for Best Novel of 2006. Other bestselling titles include Paranoia and High Crimes, both of which became major motion pictures. He lives in Boston.
