Shadow & Subterfuge — a six-book series of historical espionage thrillers
A six-book series of historical espionage thrillers
Press a nameplate on the wall. Open the file on the desk. Tune the radio. Try the archives drawer.
Silent Key PressSilent Key Press is the publisher for the Shadow and Subterfuge series of historical espionage thrillers. The books, related websites, and social media are fiction. Every effort has been made to ensure they are based upon historical events and actual covert operations. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictionally. All other elements are drawn from the author’s imagination.
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Fred Brown
- Name
- Fred Brown
- Missions
- 6
- Status
- Retired, Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal
- Service Dates
- Presidential Appointment, 1940 – 1942
Office of Strategic Services, 1942 – 1946
Office of Special Operations, 1946 – 1947
Central Intelligence Agency, 1947 – 1962
Recall to Duty, 1967 – 1969
Recall to Duty, 1988 – 1990
That was my name for the first seventeen years of life. Since then, I’ve been many people, each with a new alias. That’s what happens when you become a spy.
At 17, I had my life planned — escape the farm, go to university, study electrical engineering, and start a career full of adventure. But the U.S. government had plans for me and they had never told me — until then.
Two weeks after graduating in 1940, a trio of government agents arrived in an Army staff car — let’s call them the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker. The night before, I’d heard a BBC announcer read out Churchill’s Dunkirk speech on the shortwave radio I’d built from scratch. So, I knew what was happening in Europe.
They brought me a draft card and told me I would be a spy — a deep-cover mole planted in Nazi Germany. I could choose to go now and get training, or wait until I turned 18 and go by the draft. I was natively fluent in German, allowing me a chance for survival and having some training would increase my odds, I thought. My desire for adventure was strong. As an Eagle Scout, my sense of duty to country was ingrained. I jumped at the chance, not realizing they had planned this as a suicide mission.
I would have to “fit in ... or die” as Frederich “Zelly” Zellner, a Hitler Youth member destined for the Schutzstaffel or SS. But circumstances turned strange. They asked Ma for pictures of me and she had them already sorted in a drugstore sack — as if she knew. I found my scout court of honor picture on the cover of a Nazi magazine published in Germany two years before. My spy mission wasn’t an adventure. It was a deliberate deception that thrust me into an international conspiracy as if I were a pawn. In short, it became a nightmare.
Join me as I fight to survive, fulfill my missions, and make it home to friends and family.
What Secrets Lie in the Shadows?
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