Thursday, September 18, 2025

Welcome to the 'Corey Pearson – CIA Spymaster Series'- Novels and Short Stories of Espionage and Intrigue!

                         Whether you’re looking for a quick, thrilling short-story read or an immersive spy novel to sink into, Corey Pearson’s world has something for every adventure lover. Buckle up, explore the world of espionage, and join Corey Pearson on his next mission today!   

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COREY PEARSON- CIA SPYMASTER NOVEL SERIESEnter the deadly world of Corey Pearson – CIA Spymaster, where deception is survival and the enemy hides in plain sight in these full-length novels. In Mission of Vengeance, Pearson hunts Russian agents behind a Caribbean massacre. In Shadow War, he uncovers a sleeper cell plot threatening millions on U.S. soil. From covert ops to nuclear threats, these gripping thrillers fuse real spycraft with breakneck action. The line between ally and traitor blurs—and only Pearson’s team can stop the chaos before it’s too late.


COREY PEARSON- CIA SPYMASTER SHORT STORY SERIESThese quick, 20-30 minute reads are perfect for spy thriller enthusiasts who crave high-stakes missions packed with real-world espionage and gripping spycraft. Read them in any order and get whisked away into Corey Pearson’s daring adventures, all in a single sitting!


 




  


 

These Spy Movies Earned Praise from Former CIA Operatives


 

     When it comes to spy movies that nail the CIA vibe, a few stand out—not just for the action, but for how close they get to the real deal. They’re not all bullseye, but some get damn close.

     “Three Days of the Condor” (1975) tops the list. Robert Redford plays a low-level CIA analyst who stumbles on a conspiracy and suddenly finds himself dodging assassins. It’s smart, tense, and stripped down. No gadgets, just grit. That one stuck with me.

     Then there’s “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977)—It may be Bond territory, but with a CIA angle that’s more stylized than real. Still, it throws in some fun chaos with nuclear subs and uneasy alliances.

     “Syriana” (2005)? That’s George Clooney showing the dirty, tangled side of the CIA’s oil interests in the Middle East. It’s dense and heavy, but it reflects the kind of geopolitical complexity the Agency deals with every day.

     “Argo” (2012) is a different animal. Based on a true op, it shows how the CIA faked a sci-fi film to smuggle American diplomats out of Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis. Ben Affleck plays Tony Mendez—the real deal behind the mission. I actually met Tony in 2009 at an AFIO luncheon in Cleveland. He laid out the entire plan behind Operation Argo over two hours. No Hollywood spin, just facts. He was sharp, calm, the kind of guy who could talk you out of a gunfight with a clipboard. Parkinson’s took him a few years later. Hell of a loss. RIP, Tony.

     “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014) is more of a modern twist. Chris Pine plays a CIA analyst who uncovers a Russian plot to crash the U.S. economy. It’s flashier, faster-paced—but there’s a thread of truth in how analysts can end up in the line of fire.

     And “Bridge of Spies” (2015)? That’s more Cold War chess match than shootout. Tom Hanks plays a lawyer roped into a prisoner swap with the Soviets, orchestrated by the CIA. Quiet tension, but real stakes.

     There are plenty more CIA-based films out there, but those are the ones that hit me hardest—especially Condor. I also had the chance, through AFIO, to attend some seminars where former CIA officers broke down which spy flicks they respected. No official endorsements from Langley, of course—but in private, a few names always came up.

     “Zero Dark Thirty” was one. Former CIA Director Leon Panetta gave it props for how it portrayed the years-long hunt for bin Laden. He said the movie got the mindset right—the grinding intel work, the obsessive detail, the silence before the strike.

     Watching these films—and hearing real CIA operatives weigh in on them—helped shape how I build characters in the COREY PEARSON—CIA SPYMASTER SERIES. I wanted them to feel lived-in, battle-tested, and human. These movies? They weren’t just entertainment—they were blueprints for how the Agency operates in the shadows, and how its people think under pressure.

     Truth is, the best spy stories don’t come from Hollywood. They come from the quiet ones who lived it—and sometimes, if you listen close enough, the movies echo just enough of that truth to matter.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His work offers readers an insider’s glimpse into the world of espionage, inspired by the complexities and high-stakes realities of the intelligence community.

 

 

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Stella Rimington: How Britain’s First Female MI5 Chief Redefined Spying and Inspired Realistic Women Spies in Fiction

Stella Rimington

     Stella Rimington didn’t just kick open doors in the British spy world—she blew them off the hinges. At a time when the intelligence game was run by men in gray suits and darker secrets, she stepped into the heart of MI5 and rewrote the rules. She didn’t look the part of a spymaster, and that was exactly the point. She used brains, guts, and relentless drive to rise through the ranks, and when she finally took the top job, the old guard had no choice but to fall in line.

     She started small, behind a typewriter in an MI5 outpost in India, a temporary gig that turned into something much bigger. When she came back to the UK, she climbed fast. Counter-espionage. Counter-terrorism. Home-grown threats, foreign infiltrators, the Cold War chessboard—you name it, she played it, and usually better than the men around her.

     By 1992, she was named Director General of MI5, the first woman to run Britain’s domestic spy agency and, more shockingly to the old-timers, the first MI5 chief whose identity was made public. That kind of transparency was unheard of in the intelligence community, but Rimington wasn’t interested in playing by dusty rules.

     She believed the spy world had to evolve or collapse under its own secrets. That meant letting the public in—just enough to understand who was protecting them and why. She gave public speeches. She explained, in plain English, what MI5 did and how it could do that job while respecting civil liberties. That was her mission: modernize the agency without losing its edge. And she did it without blinking, even when the critics howled.

     After stepping down in the mid-90s, she didn’t retire to some quiet countryside cottage. No, she picked up a pen and started writing. Her memoir peeled back the curtain on the shadowy world she knew so well, but it was her fiction that really hit the mark. She created a series of thrillers featuring a tough, smart MI5 agent named Liz Carlyle—a character drawn from the kind of operatives Rimington herself had hired and trained. These weren’t fantasy spies. These were real women doing real, dangerous work in a world that still underestimated them.

     That same spirit runs through my Corey Pearson—CIA Spymaster Series. The female agents in those stories are cut from the same cloth as Rimington’s own legacy: decisive, unflinching, and able to think ten moves ahead of the enemy. They’re not sidekicks or romantic interests—they’re mission leaders, field operators, codebreakers, and, sometimes, the last line of defense. Like Rimington, they carry the weight of their decisions and know when to strike and when to vanish.

     Stella Rimington proved that leadership in the spy world isn’t about volume or ego—it’s about clarity, control, and conviction. She didn’t care much for attention, but she cared deeply about doing the job right. And in doing so, she changed the shape of modern espionage. She showed that a woman could not only survive in the shadows but run the entire damn operation. For writers like me and readers who crave high-stakes realism, her life wasn’t just inspiring—it was blueprint-level material. She lived it, then handed the rest of us the keys.

     Now that’s how legends are made.

Top of Form

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His work offers readers an insider’s glimpse into the world of espionage, inspired by the complexities and high-stakes realities of the intelligence community.


Monday, September 15, 2025

From Fiction to Fear: The Real Spy Games Behind Shadow War’s Deadliest Weapons

 

Silent Killers: The Chilling Threat of Mini-Nukes and Bio-Weapons On American Soil

     Imagine this: You’re grabbing coffee, scrolling headlines, and suddenly the alert hits your phone. A city has gone dark. Chaos erupts. No one knows if it’s radiation or a virus. All they know is something horrific has been unleashed—and it didn’t come from missiles or planes. It came in a carry-on bag or a medicine dropper.

     This isn’t sci-fi. It’s not just the plot of a movie. It's a nightmare scenario the CIA and FBI quietly spend billions trying to prevent every single year. A suitcase nuke or a genetically engineered virus—that’s the kind of hell we’re talking about. And the terrifying truth? It’s not just possible. It’s plausible.

     That’s the pulse-pounding fear that runs through SHADOW WAR, my spy thriller where CIA operative Corey Pearson uncovers a chilling plot. A Russian sleeper cell is hiding in plain sight on American soil, and they're planning something massive. Corey doesn’t know if it’s a miniature nuclear bomb or a lab-grown virus—but he knows it’s coming. And fast.

     Now, let’s break it down. A suitcase nuke isn’t a Hollywood gimmick. It’s a real thing. Back in the ‘90s, there were serious concerns that the Soviet Union had developed compact, portable nuclear devices. After the fall of the USSR, some of these so-called “tactical nukes” went unaccounted for. That’s not paranoia—it’s documented intelligence fear. General Alexander Lebed, a former Russian security chief, publicly admitted that dozens of these small nukes were missing. Imagine one of those falling into the wrong hands—say, a terrorist sleeper cell in Chicago or D.C.

     The scary part? You wouldn’t see it coming. A bomb like that could fit in a duffel bag. The blast wouldn’t level a city, but it would cause mass casualties, radiation fallout, and pure panic. Infrastructure would crumble. The economy would nosedive. And public trust? Gone in a flash.

     Then there’s the other invisible killer: a lethal virus. Not the kind you catch from shaking hands, but a bioweapon genetically designed to spread like wildfire. Think COVID-19 but engineered for maximum lethality. Something cooked up in a rogue state lab—or worse, in someone’s garage with CRISPR tools and a laptop.

     The Department of Homeland Security has actually run simulations of such an attack. Operation Dark Winter, back in 2001, imagined a smallpox outbreak. The result? Society collapsed in under two weeks. Hospitals overwhelmed. Riots. Martial law. And that was just a tabletop exercise. Today’s synthetic biology makes things way more dangerous. The tools are cheaper, faster, and more accessible than ever.

     InSHADOW WAR, Corey Pearson and his CIA team don’t have the luxury of waiting. They're racing to uncover what the weapon is and who’s behind it. As Corey infiltrates the Russian network, he starts to see the fingerprints of both threats. Lab shipments that don’t add up. Black market uranium. A chilling video message promising “a reckoning.” The tension ratchets up as the lines between reality and nightmare blur.

     And here’s where fiction meets fact. The CIA and FBI are constantly hunting down leads like this. There are entire teams devoted to sniffing out “loose nukes.” Joint Task Force teams work quietly across borders, intercepting materials, disrupting terror financing, and flipping insiders. Bio-threat units dig through online chatter, scan university labs for irregular research, and monitor travel patterns of known actors.

     Remember Ayman al-Zawahiri? Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command reportedly explored biological weapons back in the early 2000s. U.S. intelligence took it seriously. They still do. Every year, federal agencies run war games, analyze “dirty bomb” scenarios, and scan cargo entering ports for radiation. It’s the stuff that keeps the intelligence community up at night—and rightly so.

     The truth is, we’re living in a world where one determined group could change everything with a single briefcase or a vial. And if they do, it won’t come with a warning. It’ll come with a whisper. A headline. A sudden silence.

     That’s the edge Corey Pearson walks in SHADOW WAR, a story drawn from real fears, real threats, and real intelligence chatter. As he closes in on the conspiracy, he’s not just trying to stop an attack—he’s trying to solve the puzzle before it’s too late. Because in this game, one wrong move means millions dead.

     So next time you hear about national security spending or spy satellites in orbit, remember: it’s not overkill. It’s insurance against a day we pray never comes. And if that day ever does come, God help us—it’ll be counterintelligence teams like Corey Pearson’s that we’re counting on.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His work offers readers an insider’s glimpse into the world of espionage, inspired by the complexities and high-stakes realities of the intelligence community.

 


Saturday, September 13, 2025

Russia’s Assassins: How Moscow’s Secret SSD Unit Targets the West and the CIA

 

Russian assassins aren’t just a spy-thriller trope—they’re the sharp edge of a real shadow war unfolding worldwide

     Ever feel like the rules used to matter, but somewhere along the way, they just... stopped? Especially in the world of spies and shadows, there were unspoken codes. One of them: don’t kill each other’s operatives—especially not on foreign soil. It was messy. Risky. The kind of thing that sparked political firestorms. Sure, espionage was always ugly—spying, sabotage, hacking—but murder? That used to be the line.

     Russia’s not interested in that line anymore.

     There's a unit deep inside Moscow’s intel machinery called SSD—the Department of Special Tasks. That name may sound bureaucratic, but what they do is anything but. Think car bombs, assassinations, sabotage plots, even planting explosives on planes. SSD isn’t just waging a new Cold War—they’re already deep into it. And they don’t care who notices, as long as the job gets done.

     Word inside Western intelligence is that SSD absorbed the GRU’s old hit squad, Unit 29155. If that rings a bell, it's because they’ve been linked to poisonings, explosions, and just about every dirty op that ends in a closed casket. These aren’t the guys who care about headlines—unless they’re the kind that list body counts.

     And this is where fiction starts to rub elbows with fact.

     In PAYBACK, a Russian assassin goes rogue—or so it seems. He’s not taking out diplomats or high-value assets. He’s hunting young CIA operatives. Handpicked. Rising stars. Kids in a top-secret Mentorship Program, all full of ambition and promise—until someone starts dropping them one by one. These aren't random hits. They're messages. Psychological warfare aimed directly at Langley.

     First, a CIA analyst gets gunned down just as she slides her key into her apartment door. Long day at the Russian Desk—ends in blood. Two more, taken out with pinpoint sniper shots. Not accidents. Not coincidences. Somebody’s playing chess, and the CIA is down three pawns before they know the game’s begun.

     Corey Pearson—Langley's top spymaster—is called in to stop the bleeding. He and his elite sleeper cell team start peeling back layers of the operation, and what they uncover goes way beyond revenge. From the alleyways of Zurich to the power corridors of NATO, the clues lead to a conspiracy buried deep in Western intelligence. Pearson finally tracks the killer to a forgotten KGB safehouse in the Swiss countryside. They capture him alive, but it’s not over. He’s bait now. The goal? Draw out the Kremlin’s real players—the ones pulling the strings.

     Sounds like fiction? Maybe. But take a look around.

     Alexander Litvinenko. Poisoned in London with radioactive polonium. Sergei Skripal and his daughter, nearly killed by Novichok in Salisbury. Alexei Navalny? Same poison, different target. These weren’t chaotic killings during wartime. These were deliberate, targeted, surgical. Executions, in cities that should have been safe.

     And the pattern isn’t just about silencing critics or rogue agents. SSD and other Russian units have allegedly gone after German CEOs, planted bombs, even rigged airplanes. Ukrainian intelligence officers have been car-bombed. Maksym Shapoval—remember the name—was blown up in Kyiv while investigating Russian war crimes. That’s not a thriller plot. That’s a headline.

     And here’s the part that should make all of us sit up: it’s not just Europe anymore.

     The U.S. is seeing this danger creep closer. In Florida, a former Russian intelligence officer who helped the CIA was tailed and photographed near his home. Nobody pulled the trigger that time. But if you know how these things go, that’s how it starts. First, they follow. Then they wait. Then someone disappears.

     That’s what makes PAYBACK feel more like a warning than a novel. The kills. The sniper setups. The brazen reach of Moscow’s assassins. SSD doesn’t just act like they’re above the rules—they behave like the rules were made for weaker players.

     Once a country decides that borders and treaties don’t apply to them, nothing’s off-limits. Safehouses stop being safe. Langley starts feeling like a target zone. Salisbury or Silver Spring—it’s all fair game if Moscow’s calling the shots.

     So what now?

     The West has to wake up. And fast. If Russia’s going to play this game, it needs to cost them. Publicly. Politically. Financially. We need to shine light on the assassinations and call them what they are. And we need to do a hell of a lot more to protect the people on the front lines—analysts, defectors, journalists, allies—because if we keep treating this as Cold War throwback theater, we’re going to lose real lives.

     We also need to get sharper at counter-intelligence. The scenarios in PAYBACK—the sniper hits, the betrayals, the moles inside NATO—they shouldn’t feel plausible. But they do. Because we’re not just dealing with spy-versus-spy anymore. This is war by assassination. Terror without armies. Chess played with bullets.

     At the end of the spy thriller, Corey Pearson figures out what’s really driving the mission. It’s not orders. It’s not policy. It’s personal. It’s about payback.

     And maybe that’s where we are now, too. The rules have changed. Time we started acting like we know it.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His work offers readers an insider’s glimpse into the world of espionage, inspired by the complexities and high-stakes realities of the intelligence community.

Friday, September 12, 2025

Unmasking Russian Sleeper Cells: The Covert Spy War Against America

FBI moves in—Russian sleeper cell couple caught as agents close the trap in broad daylight after months of surveillance

 There’s something uniquely unsettling about the idea that the enemy might already be living next door. Not in a metaphorical way—literally. Blending in. Mowing the lawn. Playing the part. And waiting for the call.

That’s what sleeper agents do. And the Russians have been perfecting the craft for decades.

     The concept isn’t fiction. It’s not some far-fetched plot from a Cold War thriller. Russian sleeper cells are real, have operated in the U.S., and still pose a very serious threat to American national security.

     The CIA knows it well. They’ve deployed sleepers of their own overseas—agents who "go to sleep" for years. No contact. No signals. They build their cover, blend in, and wait. But the Russians? They mastered turning ordinary-looking lives into long-term assets. Sometimes entire families are involved. Sometimes it’s a woman posing as a stay-at-home mom in suburban New Jersey, like Cynthia Murphy—real name Lydia Guryeva—who was tasked with developing a relationship with a high-ranking U.S. official. Sometimes it's a real estate developer’s "friend," Vicky Pelaez—aka Mikhail Kott—a Russian operative posing as a journalist, whose job was to mine information on U.S. economic and political issues. All it takes is a trigger—then the cell activates.

     After World War II, the KGB flooded America with female agents who married U.S. military officers. They weren’t just going to sleep in suburbia—they were going to sleep with their targets. When the time came, Moscow would give the signal, and those quiet wives turned into information funnels.

     Fast forward to 2010, when the FBI busted a Russian sleeper cell operating for years under deep cover. Remember Anna Chapman? Glamorous, charming, fluent in multiple languages—and working to infiltrate American power circles. Her cell operated quietly, contacting financial elites, attempting to recruit insiders, and relaying intelligence back to Russia. They varied their routines constantly—different cafés, altered driving routes, inconsistent schedules—all textbook counter-surveillance tactics.

     At the time, I was watching SALT, that Angelina Jolie spy flick where a Russian defector claims that hidden agents—known as "KAs"—were living inside the U.S., waiting for “Day X” to strike and bring down the government from within. Seemed a little Hollywood—until real-life arrests started happening both in the U.S. and Germany, echoing the plot almost beat for beat. One German couple, living a quiet suburban life, turned out to be KGB-trained operatives who had been undercover for over 20 years. Their backstories? Fabricated. Birthplaces? Fake. Passports? Forged. But their mission? Very real.

     This isn’t ancient history, either. In 2022, a former MI6 officer claimed Britain had also been infiltrated by a sprawling network of Russian sleeper agents. And honestly, it’s hard not to believe him. These operatives don’t just pass along whispers—they target key players. They embed. They manipulate. They influence.

     That creeping sense of infiltration is the backdrop—and the battleground—for the COREY PEARSON- CIA SPYMASTER SERIES. Across three novels, the threat of Russian sleeper cells isn’t just fictionalized—it’s explored, dissected, and put under a narrative microscope.

     In MISSION OF VENGEANCE, the series kicks off with a murder at a luxury resort in the Dominican Republic. What looks like an isolated crime unravels into a Russian conspiracy stretching from the Caribbean to Langley. Two former KGB agents are behind it. One defects. And the truth he reveals sets CIA spymaster Corey Pearson on a collision course with a sleeper network buried deep within America’s borders.

     Then comes SHADOW WAR, where Pearson hunts the “Invisible Killer”—a Russian operative orchestrating a network of sleeper cells across the U.S. The assassin isn’t just killing agents—he’s setting the stage for a mass destabilization event. The tension builds with every page, but the core idea is chillingly realistic: sleeper cells already here, waiting to be told when and how to strike.

     And in PAYBACK, the third novel, that war turns personal. Young CIA operatives are being eliminated, one by one. A conspiracy snakes through NATO, the CIA, and beyond. Pearson and his elite Sleeper Cell team must dig through layers of espionage to stop the bloodletting—and root out the mole buried deep within the intelligence community.

     What makes the Corey Pearson novels hit hard is that they don’t stretch credibility—they sit uncomfortably close to the truth. The backdrop isn’t some fantasyland of spy gadgets and supervillains. It’s a world where Russian sleeper agents kill, manipulate, seduce, and infiltrate. Just like Anna Chapman did. Just like Igor Sporyshev, who tried to recruit Carter Page. Just like Vicky Pelaez, the fake journalist using her media credentials to get close to a New York developer. Just like Juan Lazaro, embedding himself in academia to scout potential sources.

     Each of those people operated undetected for years. They were never discovered by accident. It took relentless surveillance, luck, and sometimes old-school counterespionage to bring them down.

     And that’s the scary part. The ones we’ve caught? They’re likely just the tip of the iceberg.

     Russian espionage has evolved, but the tactic of sleeper cells—embedding, waiting, striking—hasn’t changed much. From the Rosenbergs in the '50s to deep cover operatives in the 2000s, the strategy remains consistent: get inside and wait.

     The danger isn’t some future possibility—it’s present tense. And as the COREY PEARSON- CIA SPYMASTER SERIES reminds us, in fiction and in reality, the cost of ignoring it could be catastrophic.

     We don’t need to imagine a world where Russian sleeper cells are active in America. We’re already living in it.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His work offers readers an insider’s glimpse into the world of espionage, inspired by the complexities and high-stakes realities of the intelligence community.

Thursday, September 11, 2025

From Washington to Langley: How America’s First Spy Ring Still Shapes the CIA’s War in the Shadows

 

From the Culper Ring to CIA black ops — the war in the shadows never ended

When most people think of George Washington, they picture powdered wigs, wooden teeth, and maybe a cherry tree. What they don’t picture is the man behind one of the most sophisticated spy networks in American history. But that’s exactly who he was.

     Yes — the father of our country was also the father of American espionage.

     Back during the Revolutionary War, Washington wasn’t just fighting the Redcoats with muskets and bayonets. He was playing a whole different game: spycraft. He built the Culper Ring, a civilian-run network that pulled off the kind of covert ops you’d expect from the CIA today—coded messages, invisible ink, fake identities, secret drop points. The British never saw it coming.

     Washington knew early on that battles are won with brains just as much as bullets. If he wanted to beat the most powerful military on earth, he needed intel. So he became America’s first spymaster.

     Fast forward 250 years, and the same dirty, dangerous spy game is still being played—just with better tech, higher stakes, and fewer rules. That’s what makes the new thriller PAYBACK hit so hard.

     In PAYBACK, someone is targeting the CIA’s best and brightest—young agents handpicked for a top-secret Mentorship Program. One by one, they’re being hunted down and eliminated with chilling precision. It’s not just murder; it’s psychological warfare. A message. Someone’s bleeding fear straight into the heart of Langley.

     Enter CIA spymaster Corey Pearson—a man cut from the same cloth as Washington. Cool under pressure. Ruthless when he needs to be. And absolutely unwilling to back down. He’s tasked with finding the killer… and stopping a conspiracy that runs deep inside Western intelligence. We’re talking NATO, covert ops, and alliances that start to crack when trust goes out the window.

     Just like Washington’s time, the enemy isn’t always wearing a uniform. They blend in. They hide in plain sight. And they’re always a step ahead.

     That’s what makes the parallels between PAYBACK and the Culper Ring so wild. Washington had to rely on ordinary citizens—tavern owners, merchants, farmers—to spy for him. People no one would suspect. That’s the exact kind of ghost Corey Pearson is chasing: someone who knows the system, knows how to disappear, and knows exactly where to hurt the most.

The thriller pulses with the same kind of paranoia and tension Washington lived with every day. Betrayal? Expected. Misdirection? Required. Trust? Dangerous.

     And like Washington, Corey’s fight isn’t just about duty—it’s personal. It’s payback.

     What makes this more than just a clever connection is the reminder that American intelligence has always walked a razor’s edge between loyalty and deception. Washington may have written the playbook, but today’s CIA is still running the same plays—only now, the stakes are global, and the enemies are harder to spot.

     So whether you're a history buff who thinks spycraft started in 1776, or a thriller junkie who can’t get enough of black ops and conspiracies, PAYBACK delivers both barrels. It’s a modern-day echo of America’s original spy game—deadlier, faster, but still rooted in the same truth:

     In the world of espionage, the shadows are never empty. And the game never ends.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His work offers readers an insider’s glimpse into the world of espionage, inspired by the complexities and high-stakes realities of the intelligence community.