The Cuckoo Asset - R Mac Seáin

A covert war on African soil. A stolen identity. A man who was never meant to exist.

David McKenna is young, talented, and ambitious - an Irish electronics student with his future ahead of him. When he is sent to Angola at the end of the 1970s, he believes he is there for a career-making opportunity in a dangerous but exciting world. Instead, he is drawn into a brutal hidden conflict where oil, politics, and international espionage collide.

Angola is a country tearing itself apart, fought over by foreign powers, intelligence agencies, and men willing to sacrifice anyone to protect their secrets. McKenna soon finds himself far out of his depth, caught between rival agendas, covert manipulation, and a deadly game in which nothing is what it seems. Every alliance is uncertain. Every promise carries a price. And every step deeper into the mission brings him closer to a truth someone is prepared to kill for.

As events begin to spiral, McKenna starts to suspect that he is not simply an observer, or even a pawn. He may be at the very centre of the operation - an unwitting asset trapped inside a plan larger and darker than he ever imagined. If he discovers why he was really sent there, he may not leave Angola alive.

Years later, the past refuses to stay buried. Old loyalties fracture, hidden identities resurface, and unfinished business reaches from the battlefields of southern Africa to the poker rooms of Las Vegas and the corridors of power beyond. What began as one young man's assignment becomes a dangerous reckoning with betrayal, memory, and the machinery of espionage.

The Cuckoo Asset is a tense, atmospheric Cold War thriller rich in intrigue, deception, and geopolitical danger. Moving from the scorched streets of Luanda to the shadow worlds of intelligence and covert war, it is a story of manipulation, survival, and the deadly consequences of being used by forces you barely understand.

 The Cuckoo Asset is a gripping historical Cold War espionage thriller during the Angolan Civil War for readers who enjoy betrayal, covert operations, shifting identities, and dangerous international intrigue.