Retribution Unleashed: A Former CIA Agent’s Vendetta Against America
Article by Eric Bornstein Historical Fiction / Medical Thriller/ Espionage Sun Tzu’s Café — A New MK-ULTRA Spy Novel
Sun Tzu’s Café is a Historical/Thriller that takes the reader through the troubled life of Qiang (强), a disaffected Chinese American CIA agent who was instrumental in the CIA’s illegal domestic hallucinogen experiments, known as Project MK-ULTRA, during the Cold War.
Qiang is the grandson of Chinese nationals who emigrated to the United States from China in March of 1882, two months before President Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited all Chinese laborers from entering the United States for ten years. Qiang’s family has a sworn revenge vow against America because the Chinese Exclusion Act doomed many of Qiang’s extended family to starvation and death during the First Sino-Japanese War.
Qiang was forcibly recruited by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA, six months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in July of 1942. At only 21 years old, he had recently graduated from Columbia University with a degree in chemistry, and the OSS required his scientific knowledge and fluency in multiple Chinese dialects. The “wartime” American government that had just interred 120,000 Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor did not give Qiang a choice and threatened the safety of his parents in Chinatown (NYC) if he did not comply with their wishes. After escaping his CIA overlords in the chaos of the Tet Offensive (1968), Qiang decides to spend the next five decades exacting revenge on America.
To accomplish his goal of revenge, he is living undercover in Hong Kong and utilizing his studies of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military genius and philosopher. He ultimately partners with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to unleash a modern MK-ULTRA experiment on America.
The methods Qiang uses are similar to what he performed during his MK-ULTRA project missions in the 1950s and 1960s, except with a new twist. He plans to take control of graduate students’ smartphones and combine subliminal signals with hallucinogen-infused coffee served to his victims in upscale American cafes. The CCP utilizes the new MK-ULTRA protocols to steal some of America’s most crucial security and technological innovations from the students’ graduate labs.
Qiang is a complex character. His naivete as to the ways of the world in a war-torn America is quickly replaced with horrific experiences and conflicting motivations in his service to the OSS and CIA masters. His early motivations are to protect his parents in Chinatown, and he is a bit of a tragic persona. However, as the story unfolds, he continues to follow his Taoist upbringing, his study of Sun Tzu, and the lessons he learned from his parents and grandparents.
As Sun Tzu’s Café is a Historical Novel, the entire book is replete with a meticulous rendering of real-life individuals and events that influenced the period from 1942 to 2023. I place real American characters such as William Donovan, Rear Admiral Sidney Souers, General Walter Bedell “Beetle” Smith, and Nelson Rockefeller in the book’s early years, all having discussions with and issuing orders to Qiang. In the middle of the book, the reader will meet Timothy Leary and believe they are observing his classic Marsh Chapel Psilocybin Experiment in real-time. Also encountered are former CIA director Richard Helms, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb (the quintessential MK-ULTRA physician), and former CIA director William J. Casey, who all had their hands in MK-ULTRA decisions over the years. In the story’s final third, the reader will meet “created characters” who are modern CIA and FBI agents ordered to stop Qiang’s actions by any means necessary.
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To research MK-ULTRA, I read every book I could find on Amazon describing the MKULTRA experiments. I also studied thousands of pages of declassified documents from the CIA and other U.S. Intelligence agencies relating to the events from 1943 (Project-PAPERCLIP) to approximately the mid-1970s (The Church Committee) that apply to the MK-ULTRA experiments. With that knowledge and research base, every time I assert that the CIA or U.S. government was experimenting on Americans and Foreign nationals in the book, I meticulously referenced my sources in footnotes at the bottom of the page. Rather than writing a reference list or endnotes at the end of chapters, I created the book in this manner to make further analysis readily available to the reader of Sun Tzu’s Café. In many ways, the work looks like a History Book, but it is a novel.
Much of the historical information uncovered was quite disturbing. There were thousands of government actors employed and vast sums of money spent on MK-ULTRA. The covert program intended to study “the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior;” however, the techniques and practices utilized were ethically indefensible. The human experiments on American citizens involved hallucinogens like LSD and hypnosis to test “methods” on American citizens without any consent. Many “subjects” of the experiments had permanent brain damage or died. We will never know the actual numbers, as many records were purposefully destroyed. This flagrant disregard for medical ethics and human rights was a dark time in American history. The MK-ULTRA experiments act as a stark reminder of the necessity for checks and balances in our republic’s exercise of power.
I built and maintained tension throughout the story using “time” as a literary element. The protagonists experience flashbacks and foreshadowing to reveal critical past events that shape their characters. The method also creates constant anticipation and suspense, impatiently waiting to see how these events will influence each character’s future. The first 200 pages are written as a non-linear narrative. The story begins by jumping back and forth from the past into the present, out of chronological order. The reader is challenged to piece the timeline together before the timelines converge in August of 2023 for the final 150 pages.
In writing this book, I followed an “organic writing process.” The novel developed naturally without following a strict outline. As I came across interesting historical events in my research that dovetailed with MK-ULTRA, I started writing chapters out of order. Once I had eight or nine chapters, I began to place them on the 80-year timeline. Then, I started to fill in the pieces of the story decade by decade. I did not figure out the story’s conclusion until about two weeks before it was completed. This process allowed me spontaneity and creativity without a predetermined plot or end. I think my process led to some unexpected narrative turns.
Sun Tzu’s Café delves deeply into the trauma faced not only by patients put through the hallucinogen experiments but also the trauma caused to the story’s protagonists as they come to grips, decade by decade, with the horrors that they unleashed on innocent and unsuspecting citizens through MK-ULTRA. The novel also does not shy away from the moral deficiencies of the U.S. government and its denial of accountability for the CIA covert experiments.
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I believe that a significant number of Americans are unaware of the historical abuses of our government and what actually happened to many of our citizens during the Cold War with the CIA and the military testing of Biological, Nuclear, and Pharmaceuticals on American citizens. These subjects and their history are generally not taught in public schools because they do not put the United States government in a good light. This practice, unfortunately, breeds idleness and ignorance on the part of our younger generations that then leads to many of our problems today, such as legalized THC and uncontrolled military spending and deficits. Sun Tzu’s Café provides access to some of this history in an exciting and easy-to-read fashion that will leave an impression on the reader and make them want to explore more of what our government has done covertly over the decades.
