Blackford Oakes

President Truman is near the end of his term in office, and Great Britain has a new queen. It is 1952, the Cold War is heating up, and vital military secrets are falling into Soviet hands. The CIA faces a delicate dilemma-for the source of the leaks has been traced directly to the Queen's chambers. The situation must be resolved but without damaging the young Queen's self-confidence and public credibility. Young Blackford Oakes, the handsome, debonaire, and audacious Yale graduate and ex-fighter pilot, is selected to penetrate the royal circle, win the Queen's confidence, and plug the leak. The action leads to an explosive showdown in the skies over London, one that could determine the future of the West. Buckley presents a thrilling spy novel as he introduces Blackforf Oakes for the first time in Saving the Queen.

CIA superspy Blackford Oakes, fresh from his daring exploits at Windsor Castle, has been entrusted with a matter of some delicacy: finding the perfect blue to restore the war-damaged windows of a thirteenth-century German chapel. The owner of the chapel, Axel Wintergrin, is not only an old friend but a charismatic hero who is rising to power in Germany. He is rallying his countrymen toward reunification, an idea that creates panic on both sides of the Iron Curtain. As the Cold War turns hot, Oakes is thrown into the arms of a beautiful KGB agent-and onto the horns of a dilemma. He must either betray her or pull the switch on his friend.

It's 1956, and the Cold War is hot. Hungary has just fallen, and Blackford Oakes is back from Budapest, puzzling over a betrayal and mourning a tragedy he couldn't prevent. But in Washington, as in the Kremlin, all attention is focused on the race to put the first satellite in space. Ironically, each has the secrets the other needs. The solution: kidnap a pair of extraordinary Russian scientists who can put the United States in the lead. Blackford Oakes is in charge, unaware that KGB spymaster Bolgin and a trio of vengeful Hungarian freedom fighters are hot on his trail. Oakes' life and America's future are on the line in this fast-paced thriller that is Buckley at his best.

Master of espionage fiction and National Book Award winner William F. Buckley Jr. brings us another in his bestselling series starring the intrepid CIA agent Blackford Oakes. When a shadowy Russian mole threatens to undermine the free world's defenses by infiltrating President Eisenhower's National Security Counsel, CIA super-secret agent Blackford Oakes is called in to unmask the imposter. Then, Oakes turns the tables on the Communists by piloting a U-2 spy plane on a Gary Powers—style one-way mission behind the Iron Curtain. Sentenced to death and trapped in the depths of the Lubyanka prison, Oakes may have turned his last trick. Or has he?

It is 1961 in Berlin, and the Cold War is at its most chilling. Suave CIA agent Blackford Oakes has come to investigate. Brilliant, charismatic, and with a tragic past, Henri Tod is head of Bruderschaft, the underground anti-Communist organization. Oakes will need his help in cracking the dark plots the Eastern bloc powers are hatching. And the KGB have found the one chink in Tod's armor.

The year is 1961; the setting, Havana. CIA super-secret agent Blackford Oakes has been sent there on a mission, only to find himself in the eye of an international political hurricane. President Kennedy has selected Oakes to meet with Che Guevara inside Castro's Cuba as part of Operation Alligator, a daring plan to bring about an era of détente in East-West relations. The communists, however, have another agenda in mind: a double cross with terrifying consequences. Soon, Oakes is trapped in Cuba, and the heat is on. Warming the climate greatly is the sultry beauty Catalina. The weather forecast: betrayal, power politics, and sudden death.

As Anatole Broyard of the New York Times has so aptly said, "If le Carré is the Henry James of suspense fiction, Buckley, if he chose, might be the Waugh." Bill Buckley has created a handsome American hero, Blackford Oakes, who happens to be an irreverent Yale-and-CIA-trained superspy. The year is 1954. Stalin has died in Moscow, and a deadly earnest power play nears its conclusion. Meanwhile, British and American commandos on a mission to liberate a Soviet satellite country have met a disastrous end. Jinxed. The communications system between English and American intelligence has been penetrated. Jinxed. There is a spook in their midst. High Jinx-higher still when the risk becomes one which Blacky alone must take.

Blackford Oakes launches a wild attempt to kill Castro on behalf of the CIA. Ever since the botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro has run amok. He has executed thousands of his enemies, driven his countrymen to emigrate, and done everything possible to run Cuba into the ground-all in a deliberate attempt to humiliate the White House. At least, that's how the situation looks from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where hatred of Castro has grown into an obsession. Under orders from John and Bobby Kennedy, the CIA will do anything necessary to kill Castro-no matter how ridiculous. Even-tempered CIA agent Blackford Oakes is dismayed at the agency's wild schemes, which include everything from poisoned wet suits to Mafia hit men. But the evil of Castro's regime is not a joke, and Oakes won't be laughing when he tries to knock the dictator off his throne.

William F. Buckley's bestselling Blackford Oakes novels have set a new standard for stylish espionage entertainment. Now Buckley sends Oakes on his most thrilling adventure yet. The year is 1964. Faced with a hard-hitting presidential campaign and a deteriorating situation in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson dispatches Oakes and a swashbuckling soldier of fortune named Tucker on secret missions to Southeast Asia. Tucker is to figure out how to interdict military traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Oakes is to supervise a secret operation in the Gulf of Tonkin, an operation that will give Johnson the excuse he needs for a greater US military role in Vietnam. Filled with the intrigue, wit, and historical detail that have distinguished the previous novels of the series, Tucker's Last Stand is William F. Buckley Jr. at his inimitable best.

The year is 1995, and an energetic senator wants to disarm, perhaps even eliminate, the CIA. To accumulate the evidence necessary to persuade the Senate, he needs the cooperation of Blackford Oakes, now retired. He wants an account from Oakes of his covert activity ten years earlier, when he served as chief of covert activities for the CIA. What will the frustrated senator do to compel cooperation from Blackford Oakes? With the detailed knowledge and savoir faire characteristic of the author, A Very Private Plot takes the listener inside the Kremlin, the Reagan White House, and the Clinton White House. The forces unleashed in 1985 threaten any resolution between the United States and the Soviet Union, and threaten the lives of a very small unit of young Russians who remain in the memory as the tale reaches its climax.

Over twenty years ago, William F. Buckley Jr. launched the dashing character of Blackford Oakes like a missile over the literary landscape. This newly minted CIA agent, brainy, bold, and complex, began his career by saving the queen of England and quickly took his place in the pantheon of master spies drawn up by Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, and John le Carré. Against the backdrop of Cold War intrigue, in this his eleventh outing, Oakes crosses swords with Kim Philby, perhaps the highest-ranking in the parade of defectors to the Soviet Union. Oakes is now himself a master spy, this time working outside the ambit of the director and around agency rules. His romance with an able and worldly Soviet doctor is consolation for the death of his beloved Sally. But after his return to Washington, he receives dismaying news. It is inevitable that the great Soviet spy and the renowned American agent will meet again, this time with deadly consequences.