About the book: year / I didn’t make it to Kirby’s funeral. I was in Singapore at the time, sporting a beard and glasses and posing as a missile defector eager to sell American secrets to the Chinese Communists. I played my part well enough to eliminate one of Mao's key agents and hack into the information pipeline he had set up to take a couple of bullets in my side and receive a coded telegram of congratulations from Hawk, the leading genius of the unit I work for. We call it AX. We're the good guys.