CIA cleaner Micah Dalton returns for another go-round of international espionage, government cover-ups, and high-intensity pursuit that has cemented this series in the best of spy fiction. The Orpheus Deception opens with a breathtaking assassination attempt on the rainy streets of Venice that sets CIA agent Micah Dalton on a collision course with a vengeful Serbian warlord. Picking up where The Echelon Vendetta left off-with Dalton on the run from the CIA-this "Venetian incident" with the Serbian attackers ultimately leads to a tangled web of conspiracies. Dalton tries to uncover the links between an act of brutal piracy in the South China Sea, a missing CIA agent, and the real nature of an elusive hospital ship known only as The Orpheus. As he seeks to unlock the shattering secret that binds such deceptions together, Dalton is once again ensnared in an international chase that takes him from Venice to Bangkok to Washington, D. C. , and finally to a violent confrontation with Serbian terrorists in the Port of Chicago.