The Hydra Protocol

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This book would not have been possible without Russ Galen, my agent, and Diana Gill, my editor. I’ve thanked them both often enough that I hope they’re getting the point by now. I would also like to thank the people at HarperCollins who made the last year so much fun, in marketing, in publicity, in library outreach (though we seriously need to release that blooper reel), in getting me to the conventions and public appearances and arranging for me to meet my readers (who definitely deserve some gratitude as well). Specifically I’d like to thank Danielle Bartlett, who worked tirelessly on my behalf even though she’d just had a baby and was a bit busy with other things. It was a great summer — I got to go to San Diego Comic-Con for the first time, among many other highlights — and it wouldn’t have happened without Danielle. I am truly grateful.

Dust motes hung in the early light streaming down through the archive’s overgrown windows, twisting slowly in the dead air. A card catalog cabinet lay overturned on the cracked linoleum, its contents gutted and spilled onto the floor so the fine handwriting on the cards was bleached to sepia by years of sun exposure. One wall of the main room was lined with stacks of periodicals held together by fraying twine — old party literature from discredited regimes, outdated factbooks and bound analyses from long-dead KGB agents, all marked STATE SECRET, all still forbidden long after the Cold War had ended.

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