An attack on an Israeli port throws the Middle East into chaos. The Mossad, Israel’s feared intelligence service, responds with a campaign of covert sabotage and assassination, determined to protect the homeland. But evidence quickly turns up suggesting that a group of moles inside Langley are helping Mossad wage its covert war. Convinced that Mossad has heavily penetrated the CIA’s leadership, the FBI launches a counterintelligence investigation. New Red Cell Chief Kyra Stryker turns to her former mentors --- now-retired Red Cell Chief Jonathan Burke and his wife, former CIA Director Kathryn Cooke --- to help uncover who is trying to tear the CIA apart from the inside out.

When a body with Russian military tattoos is found floating in a lake outside Berlin, the CIA immediately takes notice. The body is identified as the director of Russia’s Foundation for Advanced Nuclear Research, who is also a CIA asset. Alden Maines is jaded after years in the CIA cleaning up the messes of incompetent political appointees in dangerous foreign posts. When he is passed over for promotion, Maines crosses the Rubicon and decides to cash in as a double agent for Russia. But while Maines dreams of off-shore bank accounts and a new secret life, Arkady Lavrov of Russia’s intelligence service (GRU) has other plans.

The USS Vicksburg is returning home when the crew comes upon a lifeboat bearing a dead Somali pirate who shows signs of torture. Soon Red Cell analysts Kyra Stryker and Jonathan Burke trace the dead man back to an Iranian ship that appears to have dangerous, radioactive cargo on board. It becomes clear that the Iranians are building a nuclear bomb, and it is up to Stryker and Burke to stop them before word gets out.

The CIA Red Cell is a real “devil’s advocate” analysis unit created on September 13, 2001 by then CIA Director George Tenet to “tell me what no one else is telling me.” Mark Henshaw is a CIA analyst and based his debut novel on Tenet’s red cell premise. RED CELL follows two CIA outcasts brought together to stop a secret Chinese weapon that threatens to provoke a world war.