Mr. Coyle spent 30 years as a field operations officer for the CIA, almost half of that time abroad, working undercover in a variety of countries, including Russia. He is a recipient of the CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit. Since retiring in 2006, he has been teaching at Indiana University. His first hand knowledge of espionage and Russia allows him to weave together a plausible tale of true historical facts with a rich imagination of characters and events that might have been. This is his third spy novel.