A & E

First, as a former undercover agent with national and state crime-enforcement organizations, he has been to "a whole lot of autopsies" and doesn't like to be reminded of the experience.

Second, not once did he encounter women -- or men -- investigating crime scenes while dressed for a night on the town.

"The idea that they crack cases and race around with guns in low-cut blouses, it's exciting," says Stone, the author of "The Orpheus Deception." "(Jerry) Bruckheimer is an exciting filmmaker, but it's silly stuff."

Instead, Stone has decided to write fiction, using his background as the grist for stories that have a patina of realism.

Stone is a pseudonym. The author admits he's 61 and has been an operative in North America, Central America and Southeast Asia. But he's not ready to reveal his true identity because many of his peers are still in the field. When he expressed an interest in writing, they told him, "'Make sure the stories you tell do not bring the fire down on us.'"

"Which is quite fair," Stone says. "The guys who tell stories about what their unit did in Da Nang or somewhere like that are betraying a really important trust. ... So far I'm doing OK being David Stone. Until the people I worked with have a different feeling, or some of the guys are into retirement and their feelings don't run as high as they used to, until I get permission, I'll keep it that way."

Stone's first novel, "The Echelon Vendetta," introduced the character of Micah Dalton. A CIA "cleaner," Dalton travels the world fixing situations that don't have easy solutions. In "The Orpheus Deception," Dalton is at odds with the CIA and being pursued by assassins from the Serbian mafia. And he's haunted by the ghost of a deceased colleague.

"He's an interesting guy, and I've known guys like him," says Stone of the character. "I think it's interesting that the Cold War is resurfacing, and the world he's living in is becoming more complicated."

Stone has been in dangerous situations, but nothing on the scale of his character, who seems to find trouble every 10 pages.

"Guys doing full-on urban combat in Iraq right now are looking at situations that I only encountered once in my career," he says. "That was in Hue (in Vietnam), and that kind of fighting is the worst kind of fighting."

One of the more daunting situations Stone encountered indirectly led to his writing career. While working undercover with a state law enforcement agency, he was the second man through the door during a raid. Because the first man in throws the flash grenades that provide cover, it's the second person who is most likely to get hurt, and Stone took an iron bar to his rib cage and suffered a collapsed lung and spinal and nerve damage.

"My wife said, 'I don't think I like you doing this anymore,'" Stone says. "I said, 'What am I going to do? I don't have any marketable skills.'"

Stone's wife reminded him that he was a good storyteller, and suggested he try writing fiction. Because he loved literature and reading, "there was kind of a tug" in that direction. Stone published his first novel last year.

"The Orpheus Deception" is set in Venice, Serbia, the South China Sea, Singapore and, eventually, Chicago. Serbian warlords are planning a terrorist attack in the story, which Stone partially based on the Chechen arms dealer Victor Bout, who was recently apprehended in Thailand, and the Montegrin mafia, which has wreaked havoc in the Balkans.

"When you cross out of Trieste and go into Slovenia and Montenegro and those territories, you're really in lawless territory," Stone says. "There is a place called Pristina in Kosovo that's like Casablanca in the '40s. You can get anything, you can buy anything. The hotel there, The Grand, is still operating as a center for major weapons traders, drugs. Whatever you want to happen, you can make it happen there. That's the global, subterranean network."

Stone's book paints a dark picture, reminding that so much evil is present and not accounted for in the world. But as bleak as parts of "The Orpheus Deception" are, there is a counterbalance.

"They do not go unopposed," Stone says of the villains. "There are a lot of very smart people working against them who generally are doing very well. I think, eventually, the clear-eyed and the people who believe in the great tradition of the West will, if not triumph, eventually win the larger struggles."

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