Thin Line

What -- and who -- made Jack Sullivan: that oddest of preparatory academies, the United States Central Intelligence Agency, and its graduates, the people who inhabit the ambiguous world of spies, deceit, and illusion. In early 1963, when the CIA withdraws support from the Vietnamese government by folding up a clandestine -- and extremely lucrative -- heroin-smuggling operation, three top agents, Sullivan being one, find themselves out in the cold. Jack Sullivan knows nothing of the narcotics operation; for his part, he has been rounding up Chinese rebels in the Burmese interior to aid the U.S. should the inevitable war bread out. When his operation is rolled up with no explanation, he feels betrayed. From Lashio to Saigon, From the Bahamas to Paris, Sullivan searches for the two other agents -- the only men who can answer the questions he is not even sure he wants to ask.