Somewhere in the inscrutable vastness of China the secret is hidden . . . the formula for a DNA-synthesizing enzyme that could give China dominion over the world. To find that formula, transmit, and then destroy it, the West deploys its ultimate weapon . . . one expendable man, electronically equipped as a walking, thinking bomb. This man is Jon Hathaway, who masquerades as a Canadian Maoist, Geoffrey Blair, Jr., to enter China . . . Jon Hathaway who has an intimate knowledge of China, of love and of violence, and a paradoxical purpose of his own in undertaking this mission.
Monitor him, as Washington does, half a world away, as the transmitters implanted in his body relay his every breath. Follow him as he gains entree into the closely guarded Great Hall, into the confidence of Chairman Mao himself, and learns from the lips of the worshipped leader the philosophy that prompts Chinaβs singular course in world affairs. Listen to his heartbeat as he is mobbed by the Red Guards, enters forbidden territory, and makes love to a Chinese girl at the climax of his mission. Will he succeed or must the βdestructβ mechanism he carries destroy him by remote control?
In The Chairman, China expert Jay Richard Kennedy captures the alien atmosphere of that isolated nation, the tortuous thinking of the Maoists who believe their idol to be never wrong and the disillusioned underground workers who realize how fallible he is. From his own experience in secret intelligence, Kennedy creates the organization and mechanisms of Washingtonβs Project E, ingeniously scientific yet intricately political, and mans it with an international staff of credible human beings.
The Chairman is gripping and suspenseful fiction, its terror enhanced by the underlying premise that, in our world of perilously balanced power, fiction may be only what hasnβt happened . . . yet.