Shadow Cell An Insider Account of America's New Spy War

Andrew and Jihi Bustamante are CIA operatives who work as a "tandem couple": married spies, both committed to the agency. They meet as trainees at Langley and marry while tracking terrorists in different parts of the world. This memoir covers the assignment that follows, one the CIA has never publicly acknowledged.

The agency's network of sources in a country code-named "Falcon", a major rival of the United States, has been compromised by a mole. Headquarters needs a new way to gather intelligence there. It picks the newlywed Bustamantes because they have no history in Falcon and are easy to overlook and to sacrifice.

Their superiors have a second reason to use them, though they do not know it. The couple understand in detail how terrorist cells work, and they believe the CIA can borrow those methods to protect the country.

The Bustamantes gather a mismatched team of fellow operatives and recruit new sources from Falcon. Together they build a cell of their own inside the CIA while serving as bait for the mole. Told in the first person, the book gives an inside view of how spy wars are fought today, with a hunter and a hunted in constant play.