During the Cold War there were a lot of political thrillers published, ranging in quality from John le Carré to Robert Ludlum, with dashes of Fletcher Knebel, Allen Drury, Eugene Burdick and many others in between. You could find books in which “The President Vanishes” and ones in which submarine commanders defected. You could read hilarious novels about tiny nations brought to the brink of war against the United States, so desperate for foreign aid are they, and terrifying novels of atomic weapons falling on Moscow and New York due to a calamitous mistake.
I haven’t read “Cold Tactics” by Ted Allbeury. It first came out in 1981 as “The Twentieth Day of January.” That day and date should give you an idea of the premise.
What if the Soviet Union somehow managed to place its own man in the White House? In this case, the man is Logan Powell, a mild-mannered businessman propelled into the governor’s mansion and later the White House through a wide-ranging Communist plot of which he knows absolutely nothing–until the Soviets decide it’s time for him to repay a few favors.
Given our soon-to-be President’s insistence that Russia is a fine country and its President a good man I’m beginning to wonder about him.
Seriously. What with his unwillingness to release his tax returns, his continuing attempts to monetize his new status and his refusal (so far) to divest himself of his assets by placing them in a blind trust, could he be desperate for cash flow to service large debt to Russian oligarchs and not want the American people to know?
I was thinking about the level of disinfection that will need to take place in four years. Even if this jackass is just a dupe and not a puppet, the likelihood that he will fill up the ranks of the federal bureaucracy with foreign infiltrators is pretty high