Supernotes

Already a bestseller in Italy and optioned for film, Supernotes is a novel based on the true story of Agent Kasper, one of the many aliases of a top-level undercover spy who worked for both the American CIA and the Italian intelligence services.

     Agent Kasper is a man with a staggering résumé: a former police officer, a former airline pilot, a firearms expert, a highly accomplished practitioner of several of the martial arts, and a secret agent par excellence. In the end, his competence is his undoing. While in Phnom Penh, Kasper is approached by the CIA to track down the source of the so-called "supernotes" that are flooding Southeast Asia, illegal U.S. banknotes counterfeited so perfectly as to be undetectable, even by sophisticated machines. With patience, skill, and courage, Kasper discovers the explosive secret: a money-printing operation in North Korea. Kasper tells his handlers what he's discovered, and a few days later a Cambodian associate calls him with a single, urgent message: "Leave town now!" But before he can cross the Thai border, Kasper is arrested, apparently on CIA orders. As Kasper suffers through a brutal incarceration, he tries to figure out why the two governments he so heroically served chose to abandon him.

From the Hardcover edition.