THE PRISONER

To unmask a CIA mole, John Wells must resume his old undercover identity as an al Qaeda jihadi—and hope he can survive it—in this new cutting-edge novel from the #1 bestselling author. It is the most dangerous mission of John Wells’ career.

With his unique ability to infiltrate the Arab world, John Wells spent the formative years of his CIA career under deep cover with al-Qaeda, his success costing him the trust of his handlers. Now, he works to clean up corruption from foreign governments, as well as his own.

Evidence is mounting that someone high up in the CIA is doing the unthinkable: passing messages to ISIS, alerting them to planned operations. Finding out the mole’s identity without alerting him, however, will be very hard, and to accomplish it, Wells will have to do something he thought he’d left behind forever. He will have to reassume his former identity as an al Qaeda jihadi, get captured, and go undercover to befriend an ISIS prisoner in a secret Bulgarian prison.

Many years before, Wells was the only American agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda, but times have changed drastically. The terrorist organizations have multiplied: gotten bigger, crueler, more ambitious and powerful. Wells knows it may well be his death sentence. But there is no one else.

As a reporter for The New York Times, Alex Berenson covered topics ranging from the occupation of Iraq—where he was stationed for three months—to the flooding of New Orleans, to the world pharmaceutical industry, to the financial crimes of Bernard Madoff. He graduated from Yale University in 1994 with degrees in history and economics, and lives in New York. His first John Wells novel,The Faithful Spy,won the 2007 Edgar Award for best first novel.