Jeff Kupfer

What if the likes of Halliburton, PhRMA and Sam Walton morphed into a biotech
weapons company with a one-stop shopping mentality? What if a sinister mind
control weapon—developed by “our side”—was lost in the South Pacific and the
only clue to the location was locked inside the mind of a paralyzed Hopi spiritualist,
or in a cryptic map recently stolen by a sixties-laden schlemiel, and a guileless tattoo
fanatic?

The Deadly Telson is a twisted thriller that examines mutiny and its fallout.

In 1965, during the height of clandestine MK-ULTRA research, Comdr. Maxwell Key
recovers from his collapse in ethics and reason, and plots to destroy a mind control
weapon created by a NATO league of elite scientists. Lt. Jack Lance is assigned to
jettison canisters containing the design blueprints for NT-11 in the Moruroa Atoll one
month prior to the French nuclear tests. Unfortunately, Asperger’s Syndrome trumps
virtuosity—Lance ensconces the canisters safely in a barrier reef near the Tuamotu
Islands.

Thirty-four years later, Congor, Inc., a money-launderer pharmaceutical front for a
biotech weapon entrepreneur, is entrenched in the infrastructure of Wall Street, the
Pentagon, and NATO. Congor’s mainstay is a deadly hybrid compound derived from
scorpion venom and frog poison; with NT-11 in their arsenal, Congor would beat the
snot out of the competition.

However, Congor’s plan to shakedown Jack Lance doesn’t factor in Lewis Waxman,
the Accidental Saboteur, and his ADHD tattooed companion, Pepito “Membrane”
Perone.

Waxman’s jammed submachine has the assassins running for cover, while
Membrane—“Wax, check out the tattoos on these natives”— steals Lance’s books
and maps of the Tuamotu Islands, but not before Lance blows his own brains out.

Minda Lance witnesses her husband’s suicide just before she is pushed from her
balcony. She’s treated for an alleged brain injury at Aspen Falls, Congor’s flagship
rehab center, and receives their newest line of paralysis-inducing drugs that prevent
her from disclosing Lance’s secret hidden in the South Pacific.

Maxwell Key lives a delusion—the mutiny on Cauchemar Island is silent history—
but when he’s informed of Lance’s suicide, and the recent deaths of the remaining
NATO research team, he suspects motives beyond just finding NT-11. Key is forced
from his mental fortress to recover the canisters and discover the truth before he
becomes the next victim, but when the specific location of NT-11 rests in the hands of
a putz like Lewis Waxman, anything is possible.

The Deadly Telson