A thrilling firsthand account by the husband-and-wife operatives who rebuilt the CIA's most important network of sources in Asia after its sudden collapse in 2010-an intelligence disaster that the United States has parlayed into a new, cutting-edge form of spycraft.
Andrew and Jihi Bustamante were a "tandem couple": a husband-and-wife spy duo whose lives revolved around the CIA. They met as trainees at Langley and built a family together while hunting terrorists across the globe. But in 2010, they were pulled off the anti-terrorism desk for an even bigger assignment: to head to Asia, where the CIA's spy network in "the Empire", one of America's most formidable rivals, had recently vanished, dismantled practically overnight in a series of brutal murders and quiet disappearances. With the CIA's most important Asian spy network in ashes, the United States had been thrust into darkness just as its competition with the Empire was entering a new, even more dangerous phase.
With its back against the wall, the CIA had tapped the Bustamantes. Although not regional experts, they brought to the table a granular understanding of how terrorist cells operate, and how to take them out. Now, along with a rag-tag team of CIA operatives, they set about building a cell of their own-right at the heart of Imperial power. The pressure on the Bustamantes was intense: it was only a matter of time before America's intelligence blackout led to a wider cataclysm. As they were racing against the clock, a mole deep within the U.S. intelligence community threatened their entire operation, leading to a dramatic cat-and-mouse game on the heavily surveilled streets of the Imperial capital.
The thrilling, untold tale of one of history's greatest intelligence failures and the unlikely band of agents who were sent in to clean up the mess, “Red Cell” is also the tale of how a couple of outside-the-box thinkers pioneered a bold new way of spying, one that today has been adopted throughout the CIA, and which is positioning the United States to meet the national security challenges of the next century. A story so secret it still can't be told in full, “Red Cell” allows us to peer behind the curtain to see how one of the biggest spy wars in the world is currently being fought, and won.
