The Quimera Codes: a novel of political fiction

By Mr. Russell Rutland McGuire Jr.

Embark on a heart-pounding journey as Frank Standard, an ex-Army Captain turned private consultant, joins forces with his former flame, Zara DeLeon from the NSA. Tasked to prevent a looming nuclear disaster, their collaboration becomes a high-stakes blend of espionage and romance. Can they put aside their past and unite to safeguard the country, or will personal history jeopardize their mission? It is a gripping tale where love and duty collide in the face of a perilous national crisis. "The Quimera Codes" is a novel of political fiction told in 72,248 words. Its 41 Chapters plus Epilogue make it a quick and entertaining read. While the events are fictional much of the historical context is accurate and well researched. While the story is told against decades of political history, at the core of the narrative is a star-crossed romance between Frank Standard and Zara De Leon. Frank has set up shop as a private consultant. In the opening Chapter he has been hired by Jewish Holocaust survivors to return a painting stolen from them by Nazis in World War II: Edgar Degas' The Five Dancing Women. He succeeds beyond his wildest dreams; except he has made an enemy that could cost him his life. The action takes place against a popular uprising in Puerto Rico. A hair-brained scheme hatched by US Intelligence in the fever swamps of the Cold War reaches into the present exposing up to two million Puerto Ricans and possibly the entire population of the Nation's Capital to a nuclear catastrophe. The Quimera Project was designed 60 years ago to destroy the nation's largest naval base in the event Puerto Rico fell into enemy hands and called for the activation of cranial microchips implanted in the skulls of four unwitting Puerto Ricans by the high-frequency broadcast of the Quimera codes. The codes were designed to trigger programmed actions and behaviors. Whoever has the codes can pull the trigger which will result in four people bringing their part of the bomb to a rendezvous point at the center of the island for the assembly and detonation of the weapon. A newly elected U.S. President appoints Zara De Leon to oversee the project's shutdown, but the codes mysteriously vanish. They were thought to have been burned in a fire, but they come up for sale on the dark web. The President finds himself in competition for their retrieval with the Circle, an international cabal of antidemocratic right-wingers who plan to activate the codes, intercept the weapon, and place it on a boat sailing for the tidal basin next to the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. Zara De Leon, recruits her mentor and former lover, Frank Standard, to join her team. Their mission: neutralize the bomb and dismantle a perilous secret society that poses a global threat with their master plan of tyranny and death. The story includes the use of a CIA psychological operation to quell the rebellion in Puerto Rico featuring a deep fake of a long lost son of former, beloved Governor Luis Muñoz Marín, a traitorous Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, a mysterious Stranger intent on intercepting the codes and the everyman Juan Carlos Cordero, a tour bus operator who unwittingly becomes the reluctant hero of the novel. The book has its origins in the author's love of Puerto Rico and the amazing Central Highlands and the testy knots associated with Puerto Ricans' aspirations to self-governance.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0D56FVNHK
• ISBN13: 9798883696403
• Release Date: May 2024
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 267 Pages
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.6" x 6.0"