The manifesto soon comes to the attention of British intelligence, but both they and the CIA are restrained by their governments from taking official action. But within Komarov's party headquarters, an elderly janitor accidentally discovers Komarov's secret plans for Russia, laid out in a document that comes to be known as the Black Manifesto-a blueprint for a return to dictatorship, military expansionism and genocidal ethnic cleansing. It's 1999, and ultra-nationalist Igor Komarov's victory in the upcoming Russian presidential election seems assured. Here, contemporary Russian crypto-fascists prove every bit as villainous as their Communist predecessors whom Forsyth portrayed in The Fourth Protocol and The Deceiver. While for sheer reading excitement Forsyth has yet to top his fiction debut, Day of the Jackal, published a quarter century ago, his later novels (The Fist of God, etc.) display a mature mastery of storytelling melded with a deep knowledge of realpolitik.
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