Doubleday & Company, 1978, 216 pages Now, that novel's hero, Blackford Oakes, is back: grimly-critically-in-volved in international intrigue, prime mover in a story replete with the expected Buckley touches of language, logic, surprise, and laughter. The time: the early 1950s. The place: a defeated and divided Germany. The rising star on the political scene is Count Axel Wintergrin, whose campaign for a unified fatherland causes tremors on both sides of the Iron Cur-tain. Ouce again, young agent Blackie Oakes is called on to complete a deli-pate rand dangerous mission. In the course of which our appealing CIA Dan tat mvoived in a nonideological with the world's most alluring agent mid in a high-stakes battle of wills between the CIA and the KGB: loser kills.