Thus begins the new novel from John Grisham, a story inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. It was a Wednesday, early in September, 1952. The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him? The question is not whether Backman will survive - there is no chance of that. Then the CIA will do what it does best: sit back and watch. Eventually, after he has settled into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis. It seems Backman, in his power-broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world's most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.īackman is quietly smuggled out of the country in a military cargo plane, given a new name, a new identity, and a new home in Italy. What no one knows is that the president issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing president grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison.
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