Telefon

by Walter Wager

The Russians called the project TELEFON.

"It was brilliant," Strelski insisted. "Hypnoisis. We collected four hundred and thirty first-class English speakers who'd never left the country, drilled them in every detail of American life and then hand-picked the cream for drug-assisted hypnosis. When we were finished with them, every one believed he was the American whose papers he carried, and each was programmed to detroy a target in the U.S.A. when he received a coded phone message."

It was a brilliant plan. But now, at the wrong time, it was being executed by the wrong man. Now the Russians must stop TELEFON by dispatching their own James Bond to the United States.

Genres: Espionage, Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

181 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Wager was best known as an author of mystery and spy fiction; his works included 58 Minutes (1987), whose story was used as the basis of the action film Die Hard 2 in 1990. Two of his other novels became major motion pictures in 1977: Viper Three (1972), which was released as Twilight's Last Gleaming, and Telefon (1975). Wager wrote a number of original novels in the 1960s under the pseudonym "John Tiger" that were based on the TV series I Spy and Mission: Impossible.


Born Walter Herman Wager in the Bronx, NY, he was the son of Russian immigrants, and he attended Columbia College at Columbia University. He graduated in 1944 and later earned a law degree from Harvard; the practice of law interested him less than aviation, however, and Wager subsequently entered a fellowship program at Northwestern University through which he earned a degree in aviation law. He attended the Sorbonne for a year under a Fulbright scholarship at the end of the 1940s, and then turned his attention to earning a living. Wager spent the early '50s working as an aviation law consultant to the government of Israel, and from there moved to an editorial job at the United Nations, where he oversaw the editing of that organization's myriad publications. His interest in writing got him into radio at the tail-end of that medium's era of prominence, authoring scripts, and in his spare time he wrote stories.

He was also a writer and producer for CBS Radio, CBS television, and NBC television and was editor-in-chief of Playbill from 1963 to 1966. In addition, Wager worked in public relations for ASCAP and the University of Bridgeport.

Reviews

[Feliks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Genuinely disturbing. Better than the movie which resulted; because the movie cheats--grossly distorts--pisses away--the actual climax found in the novel. Wager was a pro; a demon for detail; and he never wrote a boring book. Of particular intrigue in this story are the sequences where agents move to destroy pieces of American infrastructure which have been re-located; or replaced. Entertaining and sad at the same time. Also Wager makes great use of a particular snippet of Robert Frost poetry --you'll never think of that poem the same way again.

[Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cold war activity by the Russians after a betrayal by one of their own. Long time Russian spies live as Americans until called into action by the Russian rogue . This book is what the movie starring Charles Bronson was based on. The movie does not follow the book all that well, except for the premise of Soviet sleeper agents planted throughout the US and that can be activated by a phone call. This is probably one of the best spy thrillers I have ever read. The pace never lets up and it is an excellent read.

[Daniel Sevitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delicious cold war thriller with an urbane Russian assassin infiltrating the US to try and stop some deep-cover Russian agents from starting WWIII. The plot is bonkers, but keeping the focus on our cynical sociopath spy keeps things fresh.

There is also some great dialogue from his handlers back in the Kremlin which distinguishes this from gung-ho American fare of the same era. It's neat and pacy and fun.

[Bob Hernandez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story, lots of action and a suspense thriller with double agents, will look for other books this author has written.

[Thanasis · Rating 2 out of 5]

1975. Οι Σοβιετικοί έχουν ένα δίκτυο από μυστικούς πράκτορες στις ΗΠΑ οι οποίοι ζουν σαν απλοί καθημερινοί άνθρωποι και ο καθένας τους έχει ένα στόχο να καταστρέψει. Οι ίδιοι δεν το γνωρίζουν γιατί είναι υπνωτισμενοι και ενεργοποιούνται μόλις ακούσουν την φράση κλειδί που τους αντιστοιχεί.

Ένας Σοβιετικός που βρίσκεται σε δυσμενεια λόγω της αγάπης του προς τον Στάλιν, αυτομολει στις ΗΠΑ και παίρνει μαζί του τον κατάλογο με τα ονόματα, διευθύνσεις, τηλέφωνα των κοιμισμενων πρακτόρων και αρχίζει να τους ενεργοποιεί με σκοπό να ξεκινήσει τον 3ο παγκόσμιο πόλεμο.

Οι Σοβιετικοί δεν κάθονται με σταυρωμένα τα χέρια, στέλνουν αμέσως την Ρωσική έκδοση του Τζακ Ρίτσερ στο κατόπι του για να τον εντοπίσει, να τον σκοτώσει και να πάρει πίσω τον κατάλογο με τους πράκτορες.

Ψυχροπολεμικό θρίλερ που δείχνει τα χρόνια του. Η ταινία με πρωταγωνιστή τον Τσαρλς Μπρόνσον μου άρεσε περισσότερο, ίσως γιατί κράτησε μόνο την κεντρική ιδέα με τους υπνωτισμένους πράκτορες.

[Ingo]

It's been quite a while, but as looked at the imdb entry for the movie Telefon (1977), with both Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent now gone, I saw, that was based on a book.
Checking my usual shops (amazon.de, ebook.de and after that I would have checked Thalia and Kobo and if I was really desperate I would have looked at Barnes & Nobles, but they do not work anymore for me for ebooks as download does not work anymore since the last forced password-change, and as I am living in Germany, I cannot complain to support, not being an US-citizen) - I snatched it up for less than 1 Eur as an EPub ebook from ebook.de. Not sure, wether this is a promotion price, as Amazon had a higher price for the Kindle edititon. And the version from ebook.de was without DRM (which I stripp anyway as long as that works).

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Walter Wager's prose is often very sarcastic and witty, which to me is unusual when reading this sort of book, and I really enjoyed that. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy much else. The overall premise is interesting enough but the pacing is absolutely leaden, with too many chapters of characters thinking about what they'll do next without actually doing it and without the author letting us in on what they're thinking about doing. The main character got a mission maybe twenty pages into the book and didn't actually start doing it until maybe 100 pages in, and it's only a 220 page book. That would maybe be fine in a thriller with really interesting characters, but there are none to speak of here; everyone's pretty much a cipher. Overall I enjoyed this intermittently but it's a book that's better in theory than in practice.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an adrenaline rush! Think of TELEFON as "The Manchurian Candidate" meets "The Americans", only set in the Seventies. The Soviets dispatch a KGB Colonel to the United States to stop a Stalinist madman from activating sleeper agents infiltrated by the Russians back in the Fifties to start World War III. The catch? The sleepers are really asleep. They were brainwashed back in Moscow into thinking they were regular Americans and can only be activated, or diffused, using a secret code. Our KGB hero must reach their targets before they do and at the same time avoid detection from the CIA.

[Bradhernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another "stuck in the 70's cloak and dagger spy novel" that has been on my shelf for years. Almost earned 2 stars but the premise is clever (hypnotized Soviet sleeper cell agents set trigger WW3 with catchphrases said over the telephone). Nice double cross in the end but the plot falls flat for most of the book.

[Michaell Cavllaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

NOT WHAT I EXPECTED

The movie was better than the book. I thought the book was going to go into a lot more detail about the personal lives of the brainwashed under cover agents. I would have liked to know how the agents were picked, trained and brainwashed into doing what they did.

[Jonathan E. Brickman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the movie (it's a very old one, very hard to find now), thought I'd try the book. Very 70's ethics. In fact it's a great study in how ethics used to be :-) Not really a great read to me. Made me want to find the movie again, it's a Charles Bronson, spy thriller with a great twist.

[stormhawk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of Course, It's Better than the Movie

Good late Cold War spy thriller, has all the highlights -- dark plots, sleeper agents, assassins, codes -- made all the more wonderful with the highest degree of dry sarcasm allowed by International Law.

[Joe Nicholl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read! Kinda spy thriller, kinda noir-ish...I liked the MK-Ultra backdrop...

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Way above average Cold War thriller.

[Bob Box · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read in 1976. Cold war thriller.

[Professor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book at the Traveler Book Cafe on 84 West right before the Pike. Years ago I saw the beginning of the film based on this book (starring Charles Bronson as a KGB agent) and so I decided it would be fun to read the book before watching the movie for once. Telefon has a great premise-it's the mid-1970s and the KGB has just performed a round up and liquidation of old guard Stalinists. One of those men, however, doesn't very much like this idea and escapes to the United States. Before he does that, however, he steals the code books for Telefon, an inactive program from the 1950s that inserted highly trained and conditioned Soviet sleeper agents into U.S. territory. The real brilliance of the program was that, through post-hypnotic suggestion, the sleeper agents are convinced that they are, in fact American and all it takes is the right code words spoken over the telephone to activate them. Once activated they will fanatically pursue whatever sabotage mission they've prepared for-and the Stalinist is intent on setting them off, one by one, to incite World War III. A single KGB agent is sent to stop him, and he's in a race against time-not just against the Stalinist, but also against the U.S. Intelligence services, as it is his duty to prevent them from knowing about Telefon.

What an awesome premise! It's really too bad that the book blows it, in several ways. For one, Tabbat (the Soviet agent), and indeed, all of the Soviet characters act and talk and make the same references that you would expect American spies and spymasters to make. Why have the lead be a KGB agent if there's almost no pay off from that decision? Secondly, Tabbat's aide is an incredibly beautiful, super submissive woman who does all he orders and constantly has sex with him. This is part of the whole spy genre that generally makes my skin crawl...the kind of old boy network, macho, women-as-funny-sex-objects school of pulp novels. There's also an American computer programmer who we mainly know through observations of her breasts by her superior in the CIA. Blarrgh.

The worst part of the novel, though, is how the villain takes his time and INCREDIBLY LAMELY spells his name out in locations before going on to the big bang. He's depicted by the end as a sleazy sexual serial killer type (complete with a double murder of prostitutes by the end), which is totally not what I expected and its the easy way out. Instead of having Tabbat be smart enough to figure out what's going on, instead he just sits around enjoying the pleasures of the capitalist's life, pontificating on Frank Sinatra, and screwing his assistant, until finally his opponent's pattern is revealed and he can *FINALLY* do something to stop it. Very disappointing.

[Harv Griffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brisk spy novel, excellently written; especially for ©1975. I couldn’t remember whether I read the book first, or saw the movie first, until the re-read. Then I recalled that I was disappointed that I never got to see Charles Bronson walk out of the sea in a scuba diving get-up onto a crowded beach; I had been imagining that scene, but it wasn’t in the movie: Russian spy Bronson flies into a Canadian airport. Watching Lee Remick work quickly cured my disappointment. (In other words, after reading the book, I wanted MORE, so sought out the movie.)

For the two of you who don’t know the plot, there is a Russian nut-job calling up Russian sleeper agents in the United States, activating them, one at a time, for their deadly pre-arranged missions of destruction against military targets. The sleeper agents are drug & hypnosis produced “robots” living American cover lives who consciously don’t know they are enemy agents, until they get the call and hear the trigger phrase that turns them into killer-compulsive-zombie-maniacs. Major Tabbat (Bronson in the movie) is a Russian spy sent into America to stop the nut-job, who just might trigger WWIII.

The dialogue surprises me, and Walter Wager has some serious literary chops (for a Harvard grad); he also occasionally gets into amusing culture commentary the way John D. MacDonald used to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_W... contains info on Wager’s other written work, including 58 MINUTES, which was made into DIE HARD 2.

On the re-read of TELEFON, I realize that the pacing of the movie and the multiple times I have watched the movie has spoiled me: the middle section of the book seems slow, until Major Tabbat figures out that the nut-job is spelling his own name with the sequence of the triggered missions. Then the speed quickly ramps up. Actually, in the book the female double-agent Major Tabbat is working with feeds him this key information bit gleaned from American Intelligence. Also, I’ve been prejudiced by the quick-cut high-drama images in the movie: I don’t remember any “slow” feelings when first reading the book. I notice this book gets a lot of bad reviews, but I think this is an over-reaction to the spectacular movie. In my opinion, the book holds up, but you can’t keep reading the book, with images from the movie intruding, because the book is quite different. So I’m sticking with my ★★★★★. If you want a written version of the TELEFON movie, a novelization of the movie screenplay, you will be disappointed.

The ending in the book is quite different from the movie; but both endings satisfy me.

@hg47

[Ann aka Iftcan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure if the book came first or the movie. I have to admit, this is one of the very few (possibly the ONLY) time I have said that the movie was better than the book. Of course, the fact that I saw the movie first might have something to do with that. But I liked the way that the movie ended much better than the way that the book did.

Still, a good "Cold War," novel with lots of action.

[D. E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional novel made into a great Charles Bronson movie. The CB. Character plays an undercover agent for a foreign operation and assign him a mission in the United States. After arrival in the states he is identified as a Russian agent and US Agents are sent out to neutralize him. This is an excellent read for the genre and an excellent period movie of the time......DEHS

[Jeff Crosby · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me some time to adjust to the author’s rhythm. Perhaps my familiarity with the Charles Bronson film got in the way. However, once I got involved in the story this was an enjoyable read.

This is a good cold war thriller that has enough unexpected moments to appeal to me. I think Kent would like this one.

[Howard Katzoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow!!

This writer is phenomenal. This is the third book of his that I've read and can't wait to buy the next one. Each is a treat and totally different from the others. Do yourself a favor and get all of them.

[Nero Grimes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The movie was better

[kikis · Rating 4 out of 5]

FIRST TIME I READ THIS WHEN I AT MIDDLE HIGH SCHOOL I DONT REALLY UNDERSTAND THEY LANGUAGE THEY USE COUNTRY ENGLISH