A subtle and masterful novel from a prescient voice on the cutting edge of spy literature.
David Ignatius is known for his uncanny ability, in novel after novel, to predict the next great national security headline. In Phantom Orbit, he presents a story both searing and topical, with stakes as far-reaching as outer space. It follows Ivan Volkov, a Russian student in Beijing, who discovers an unsolved puzzle in the writings of the seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler. He takes the puzzle to a senior scientist in the Chinese space program and declares his intention to solve it. Volkov returns to Moscow and continues his secret work. The puzzle holds untold consequences for space warfare.
The years pass, and they are not kind to Volkov. After the loss of his son, a prosecutor who’d been too tough on corruption, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Volkov makes the fraught decision to contact the CIA. He writes: Satellites are your enemies, especially your own…Hidden codes can make time stop and turn north into south…If you are smart, you will find me.
With this timely novel, Ignatius addresses our moment of renewed interest in space exploration amid geopolitical tumult. Phantom Orbit brims with the author’s vital insights and casts Volkov as the man who, at the risk of his life, may be able to stop the Doomsday clock.
Praise
“As with all Ignatius’s novels, Phantom Orbit draws back the curtain and shows how the deliberately murky world of intelligence and espionage really works.” —Alma Katsu, Washington Post
“Ignatius is an author of rare consistency. His espionage thrillers are second-to-none in their detail, relevancy, realism, and enjoyability.…Phantom Orbit is well-researched (just peruse those he thanks in the acknowledgements), well-written, and simply a great novel that manages to educate and thrill in equal measures.” —Joshua C. Huminski, The SCIF, the blog of the National Security Institute
“Engrossing.…This is contemporary cloak-and-dagger intrigue at its finest.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A space yarn filled with tension and excitement.” —Kirkus Reviews