THE SPY DEVILS Joe Goldberg Contents NOTE Foreword 1. The Streets of Kyiv 2. The Streets of Taipei 3. The Hard Way 4. The Devilbots 5. Greetings From the Devil 6. The 12th at Augusta National 7. Find the Devil 8. The Deal With China 9. The Old Timers and The New Kids 10. Serge Taube 11. Asap 12. The Streets of Belgrade 13. Chaos is Good for Business 14. Warning Signals 15. Lomina Street 16. Dream Career 17. Recruitment 18. Adapt to Circumstances 19. Chanel N°5 Parfum Grand Extrait 20. Na Cosku 21. Bondar Battalion-1 22. Nom De Guerre 23. Anna Malinov 24. The Capital Grille 25. The Mole Hole 26. Latin for Guard 27. Kill the Devil 28. Quadrangle Investment Group, LLC 29. The Hint of Coriander 30. Drunk, On Drugs, and Dancing 31. Sharks in the Med 32. 100% Silk Pajamas 33. Plausible Deniability 34. The Bank of Viktor Bondar 35. Taste of Blood 36. Thunderlover 37. Where is Tinka? 38. Truth is Stranger than Fiction 39. It Sucks to be Pavlo 40. The Day 41. Fade to Black 42. A Proposal 43. Take it to the Bank 44. Beast is Dead 45. What is in the Case? 46. The Stuff Dreams are Made Of 47. A Thin Metal Device 48. Chapel and Chen 49. Where is the case? 50. Research 51. Wrath of the Devil 52. Mr. Nice Guy 53. Who Killed Beast? 54. You are a Liar 55. We Win And They Lose 56. The Stuff of Fiction Books and Movies 57. A Delicious Ruffino Chianti 58. Certificate of Appreciation 59. Angel 60. Don’t Call Me 61. One Month Author’s Note Acknowledgments About the Author Also By Joe Goldberg NOTE All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or any other U.S. Government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or CIA endorsement of the author’s views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent disclosure of classified information. This does not constitute an official release of CIA information. The Spy Devils Copyright 2021 by Joe Goldberg All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. First Electronic Edition: May 2021 13 Digit ISBN: 978-1-7364745-1-8 10 Digit ISBN: 1-7364745-1-0 First Print Edition: May 2021 13 Digit ISBN: 978-1-7364745-0-1 10 Digit ISBN: 1-7364745-0-2 Cover by Damonza.com Printed in the United States of America Created with Vellum To my parents, Gene and Janet. I wish you were here to read this. “The Devil hath the power To assume a pleasing shape.” —William Shakespeare, Hamlet “Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.” —John Milton, Paradise Lost Foreword FROM BRIDGER Let me get straight to the point. I never thought I would be writing the foreword to a book, be in a book, or allow a book to be written with me and the Spy Devils as the main characters. Never. Not once. Then Joe approached me about telling the Spy Devils’ story in a fictionalized book. I said, “hell no!” “You have stories that need to be told,” he kept saying. After many asks, he finally convinced me. I thought about it. The world is a dangerous place. Why not give people a peek into the world of espionage? Why not shine a little light on topics governments, international organizations, or corporations would rather leave in the shadows? I did ask for conditions. Any specific details about our missions had to be changed. Names of all people, companies, dates, and locations had to be changed. We are still active and our enemies would love to find us. There are also regular hard-working people who got caught up in this, and we need to protect them. Some of you reading this will know who you are. Others will think you know, but will be wrong. I stressed the point that when it comes to the Spy Devils, the old adage ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’ is, well, true. Here it is. Truth as fiction. Bridger USA 2021 1 The Streets of Kyiv Kyiv, Ukraine The instant he was tossed from the balcony of his luxury suite into the cool darkness, he calculated how long it would be before he landed on the crowded sidewalk ten stories below. He couldn’t help it. That’s how his quantitatively-oriented mind worked. Factoring his considerable weight, distance to the sidewalk, and gravity, he determined he would hit the concrete in roughly four seconds. Give or take. Only a few seconds had passed since he heard the light taps on the wide, overly ornate door of his executive suite in the InterContinental Hotel Kyiv. He was fresh out of the shower and, in his haste, opened the door without looking through the small peephole. That, he now realized, was a mistake. A fist with the force of a sledgehammer crushed his nose. Staggering backward, he grabbed his face with both hands. He felt the warm blood already pooling in his palms. Then he felt powerful hands gripping his arms. Then came the sensation of weightlessness. Random thoughts wandered into his consciousness. Accelerating past the eighth floor, he admired the beautifully illuminated exterior of the hotel and the city’s gorgeous skyline. His feet were chilly, and he wished his comfy slippers hadn’t flown off like balloons in the wind. A wonderfully plush hotel-supplied bathrobe fluttered at his sides like broken wings, exposing his enormous hairy naked body. He worried his office would be saddled with the expense of a white robe soon to be ruined with his blood and goo. Tumbling by the fourth floor and through eyes watering from the wind, the cracks in the sidewalk appeared, flooded by soft yellow rays from lamps near the hotel entrance. The air smelled of river water and exhaust fumes. Then terror-induced depression arrived from deep within his shocked brain. He would never
