The Camp

Previously Published as The Camp - First Edition East Berlin, 1962. In the rubble-strewn shadow of the Wall, a nameless orphan scavenges a garbage dump to stay alive-until the men who run a secret decide that a child no one will miss is exactly what they need. They call it Coca-Cola City: a walled compound in the Ukrainian countryside built to look precisely like small-town America, down to the diner, the drugstore, and the fifteen-cent hamburger. Behind its razor wire, a rogue circle of KGB and Stasi officers runs their most forbidden experiment-forging orphaned children into deep-cover agents so seamless they will pass as native-born Americans for the rest of their lives. The boy is given a name, Viktor, and a promise: excel, or be discontinued. Over two brutal years he is remade-language by language, reflex by reflex, cruelty by cruelty-into a weapon the West has no defense against. But the compound's final lesson demands the one thing Viktor swore he would never surrender: the girl he has come to love. The chilling first novel in the Coca-Cola City saga, The Camp is the origin story of a weapon with a human face-and the making of a ghost who will haunt three generations.