Ask the Fire

''I had a friend who was a spy.'' So begins this story of espionage, set just before the terrible events of September 11th. Ask the Fire features a brilliant, almost enlightened, but emotionally jaded and politically cynical secret agent, a man who has seduced secrets out of Araby for decades for American intelligence agencies. Now, this agent struggles on his own to prevent the start of the Terrorist Wars. This is a story with a vast sweep that places spying and spiritual vision within the larger history of heresy and homosexuality in Western culture from the Crusades to our contemporary clash with Islamic fundamentalism. What events tie together the political activism of 1960's Texas with the legends of courtly love, the secrets of the Knights Templar and mysteries of Freemasonry in the architecture of the D.C. streets? The gay Mata Hari of Ask the Fire learns the truth. Dennis Paddie has penned a remarkable thriller, a book that transcends its story of spies and terrorists to reach for a deeply spiritual vision of human life in the charged world of the 21st century.