John Sager

Shahnoza John Sager

Shahnoza Babayeva, Uzbekistan's first-ever woman to compete in the Miss Universe pageant. Beautiful, talented and brilliant, she falls in love with and marries CIA ops officer Jeffry Holden. Together, as Agency officials, they embark on a mission that will take them to Shahnoza's home town, Tashkent, the Uzbek Republic's capital city. The story moves between CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, then to Tehran, Moscow and Tashkent. In Tehran, Iran's leadership secretly plans to produce and deploy a nuclear-tipped ICBM that it hopes will be able to reach New York City; and the assassination of Israel's prime minister is part of its plan. And if that were not enough, the Agency's Tashkent station uncovers a drug-running operation, financed by Afghanistan's ruthless Taliban leaders. At the same time, Russian president Vladimir Putin intends to annex Ukraine, to include, if needed, the assassinations of its leaders in Kiev. When CIA headquarters learns of these threats it directs its Moscow and Tashkent stations to intervene. Shahnoza's role in these efforts will be key to their success but that role, in the end, threatens her life.