The Blood of Lost Empires a Novel of the New Cold War When Claire Hayden, a ruthless CIA Special Operations Officer, recruits ex-Stasi colonel Max Reinmann to find the killer of a Kremlin insider with ties to American intelligence, she opens the door on a secret operation at the heart of Vladimir Putin's regime. Teamed with an old nemesis, ex-KGB agent Andrei Kozlov, Hayden's and Reinmann's search for the killer blazes a trail of murder, revenge, and betrayal across Europe to a Ukraine fighting for independence from Moscow's dream of a new Russian empire built from the wreckage of the old USSR. Their search leads to a secret CIA black-ops site virtually on Russia's doorstep, to the killing of a young woman trapped in a world of sex and drugs where life is meaningless, and to Reinmann's discovery that Hayden's cold-blooded methods are driven by a past she can't outrun. Snared in Hayden's scheme of treachery and deceit, helped by a fearless Ukrainian woman determined to thwart Russian tyranny, Reinmann employs half-forgotten Stasi cold war tradecraft to survive and to settle accounts between old and new adversaries.