NOVELIST HAS SCOTT CITY TIES

Without revealing too many top government secrets, Wade Stevenson, a former special agent and investigator for the U.S. Department of Defense, has woven a tale of mystery, suspense and espionage.

Stevenson, a native of Southeast Missouri, was accustomed to writing technical and classified reports for the government and surprised himself a bit with the manuscript to "The Salzdorf Wellspring."

The book, due out in August, is being published by Rodgers and Nelson Publishers.

"I was about three-fourths the way through the first book when I realized it might be too long of a book if I said everything I wanted to say," Stevenson said. So he's already 12 chapters into a sequel for the novel.

The story began during an assignment to Germany, Stevenson said. He had visited Merker's Mine where German Nazis had hidden famous paintings, gold and silver bullion and beautiful tapestries. U.S. soldiers tried to return as much of the war booty as they could.

That's what piqued Stevenson's interest.

"I just got more interested in the legacy of the Third Reich and the rape of the European continent," he said.

He developed a scenario about what might have happened had Nazi soldiers hidden paintings, sculptures and wealth in underground mines that were never discovered.

"What if there was possibly an ultra-secret mine that had been designed?" he asked.

The plot tells the story of an older Nazi SS guard who was assigned to guard that secret mine. After the war ends, he fled to Canada with his family and then later to the United States.

Eventually he returns to Germany and discovers the mine hasn't ever been found. The soldier's son enters the service and is stationed in England where he is able to transport the hidden wares back to the States.

Much of the information is based on places and events of Stevenson's life and 35-year government career. He served in the U.S. Air Force as a courier pilot during the war, stationed in England. He later worked as a special agent with the Defense Department and as an investigator for the Federal Law Enforcement Agency.

"Not too many secrets are revealed," Stevenson said in an interview from his Loveland, Colo., home. "I had to be cautious about it because it was all behind-closed-doors intelligence."

He worked in an executive position on espionage cases in the Pentagon and is bound by lifetime security restrictions on some past assignments.

"Several of the scenes are based on truth," he said, and some are based on actual assignments he had in the service or took place in Southeast Missouri.

Stevenson, who grew up in Scott City when it was still Ancell, Fornfelt and Illmo, said the book "has a lot of Scott City and Southeast Missouri" in it despite being an international story.

Stevenson began writing the book in 1994 while he and his wife, Dorothy, lived in the area. He moved to Colorado two years ago.

While in Southeast Missouri, he inspected businesses that had been awarded government contracts to make certain no government secrets were being revealed by accident. Most of that work took place in the St. Louis area, particularly with McDonnell Douglas Corp.

Farther south, his work was more investigative matters. He investigated the background of any person who was taking a "sensitive position with the government."