Cargo of Arms

“Cargo of Arms,” a literary thriller. It is 1973.  The Cold War rages behind the façade of détente.   Powerful men in Washington and Moscow are vying for control over the vast oil fields of a South American nation.  For these men, words as well as guns are weapons.  They wage campaigns of propaganda and disinformation.   They plot to convince influential writers of the truth of their lies. One campaign targets a young, beautiful poet.  Adored by the many poor of her oil-rich land, she is resented by its oligarchs.  They have long hated her family.  Her late brother raised an armed revolt against them.  Defeated, captured, he died at the hands of their torturers.   Now the poet lives to avenge him.  She will be most vulnerable where she is most certain – in her power over words. A new rebel force is rising up to challenge the oligarchs.  These rebels are fiercer than their predecessors.   They use terror as a tactic, a choice the poet despises.  But her longing for revenge is greater than her revulsion.  She lends her eloquence to the rebel cause. In New York, a fast-rising journalist, an ambitious idealist, is on leave from his newspaper, writing about his years reporting from Vietnam.  He receives an offer that lures him from his desk.   His best friend, a fellow reporter, calls from the poet’s native land, where he is covering the insurrection.  The friend asks the journalist to join him.  The two men worked together in Vietnam.  Now they will work together again.  The journalist will get to see once more the very thing he most wants his writing to convey – the stark truth about what it means to make war. Both the journalist and the poet will be deceived.  Both will discover the deception. They will have to fight for more than their self-respect and the integrity of their words.  They will have to fight for survival.