The Q Conspiracy by Alan Payne

About the book

When the luxury yacht Mona Lisa collides with a freighter and sinks in December 1947, she takes with her the secret letters of Viktor Petrovich, a mysterious passenger who'd join the weekend excursion mid way through the ill-fated cruise. Forty-five years later two small-time blackmailers discover the Q letters that link Senator Michael Peters and Asher Stein, the Israeli Consul General, to a terrorist conspiracy so heinous and Machiavellian in its cunning that it's legacy could, even after almost a half century topple a presidency, destroy the bonds between the United States and Israel, and elevate Libya to the supreme power in the Arab world.

The blackmail vise tightens when a voice on the phone, identified only as Max, contacts Stein, Peters, and the director of the Libyan interest section to set meetings with each to prove the existence of the letters and to pit each against the other for the biggest payday of the blackmailers' careers. Libya is the leverage in a bidding war: the Damocles sword poised to expose Peters and Stein.

The plan goes awry when the copies of the letters are destroyed, and Leo Zimmer, the front man for the blackmail team, is murdered by the Libyan agent, Abu Kassem. But before Zimmer dies he seeks absolution from the treasonous act he was about to commit by leaving clues to finding Max and the letters with Logan Stone, a writer and former investigative reporter. Zimmer's distorted words are gasped out in pain and delirium, but they are enough to fan the embers of curiosity. The curiosity quickly becomes a consuming zeal when Stone learns that Michael Peters, the independent frontrunner candidate for the Presidency of the United States, is in smack in the middle of the blackmailer's cross hairs.

The race between Abu Kassem and Logan Stone to find Max and the letters begins. For Kassem, his career is on the line. To Stone, it is the chance at the Pulitzer he's always dreamed of.

Before it ends, the legacy of the Q letters will leave a trail of violence, death, deceit and betrayal; and the disclosure of the chilling conspiracy to murder three presidential candidates and a gathering of prominent American businessmen by Asher Stein and a cadre of Israeli zealots disguised as Arab terrorists with Peters' help will thrust Stone into the role of judge, jury and political executioner of the next president of the United States.

About the author

Alan Payne is a graduate of the University of Miami and is a former journalist. He has also been a high level marketing representative for several large corporations and is currently president of his own marketing corporation selling a varied product line to the federal government. When not writing or running his company, Mr. Payne is a real estate investor and, along with his wife, Ann, actively saves, fosters, and finds homes up and down the East Coast for unwanted dogs through Save our Shelters, a Virginia non-profit charitable corporation.

Mr. Payne lives in the Northern Neck of Virginia in a log home on a lake with his wife, three dogs and five cats.