The Moldavian Gambit

 Lots of forces were released when the Soviet Union came apart in the early 1990s. Brad Meslin imagines the worst case scenario in his novel “The Moldavian Gambit” in which a man-portable nuclear device goes missing from a Soviet arsenal in Moldova and may have ended up in the hands of terrorists threatening to detonate in a western capital. Meslin has worked in “the intersection of aerospace, defense, private equity, and national security.” His debut novel was very favorably reviewed in the Cipher Brief by former CIA counterproliferation officer Jim Lawler who praised the book for its realism and heart-stopping plot. We will talk with Meslin about what inspired him to write the book and his sources and methods for keeping readers at the edge of their seats.