Synopsis:

Nicolas Creel is a man on a mission. He heads up the world's largest defense contractor, The Ares Corporation. He's retained Dick Pender to "perception manage" his company to even more riches by manipulating world conflicts. Shaw (no first name), a man with a truly unique past, travels the world reluctantly doing the bidding of a secret multi-national intelligence agency in order to keep the world at peace - and safe. Katie James, a journalist who will do anything to get back to the top of her profession, has just gotten the break of a lifetime, the chance to interview the sole survivor of a massacre that has stunned the world.

In this terrifying thriller with a global backdrop, these characters' lives will collide head-on as a series of events is set in motion that could change the world as we know it. An utterly spellbinding story that feels all-too-real, THE WHOLE TRUTH delivers all the twists and turns, emotional drama, unforgettable characters, and can't-put-it-down pacing that Baldacci fans expect - and still goes beyond anything he's written before.

book cover

The Whole Truth
By
David Baldacci

Copyright © 2008


To Zoe and Luke


Why waste time discovering the truth when you can so easily create it?
- The person quoted above requested anonymity as he was not authorized to speak on the record as to matters of truth.





PROLOGUE

"Dick, I need a war."

"Well, as always, you've come to the right place, Mr. Creel."

"It won't be a typical conflict."

"I never expect typical from you."

"But you have to sell it. You have to make them believe, Dick."

"I can make them believe anything."

CHAPTER 1

AT PRECISELY ZERO HOURS UT, or midnight Universal Time, the image of the tortured man erupted onto the world's most popular Web site.

The first six words he spoke would be remembered forever by everyone who heard them.

"I am dead. I was murdered."

He was speaking Russian on the screen but at the bottom his tragic story was retold in virtually any language one desired with the press of a key. Secret Russian Federation police had beaten "confessions" of treason out of him and his family. He'd managed to escape and make this crude video.

Whoever held the camera had either been scared to death, drunk, or both, for the grainy film vibrated and shook every few seconds.

The man said if the video had been released that meant he'd been recaptured by government thugs and was already dead.

His crime? Simply wanting freedom.

"There are tens of thousands just like me," he told the world. "Their bones lie heavy on the frozen tundra of Siberia and in the deep waters of Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan. You will see evidence of this soon. There are others who will take up the fight now that I am gone."

He warned that while the world had focused on the Osama bin Ladens of the world for so long, the old evil, with a destructive force a million times greater than the combined Islamic re...

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