"Your new name is John Apparite." So begins the odyssey of ex-FBI agent John Apparite, recruited by an enigmatic man he knows only as the "Director" into the most powerful and secret espionage program in U.S. history. Apparite soon finds himself battling mobsters blackmailing FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, and then disrupting a Soviet KGB plot to steal vital U.S. missile-fuel secrets in London. Yet the toughest adversary the young "Superagent" must face is perhaps the most elusive and dangerous one of all: himself. Why does John Apparite, who has long kept himself at an emotional distance from his fellow man, start feeling human again, even as he takes the lives of so many others? Can this basically decent young man from the Maryland backwoods, who is also the world's biggest Washington Senators baseball fan, reconcile himself with the cruel nature of his duty? And who is this mysterious person he calls the "Director"?< P>I. Michael Koontz was born in 1963, and is a medical professional living in the Midwest with his wife and two young daughters.