Thirteen Mountain

An atomic scientist run amok is the threat that propels Reed's brisk but farfetched first novel. Dr. Arnold Belden has convinced some White House powers, including the national security advisor, to airlift him to a remote Idaho mountaintop to conclude his experiments with a promising but potentially catastrophically explosive device based on the new concept of ``ion fusion.'' What the feds don't know is that Belden is a deep-cover Russian plant who now wants to return to Russia with the device and who has taken with him to Idaho an atomic bomb as an insurance policy for safe passage-or else he'll nuke Portland, Ore. When the White House realizes there's a problem, they call on old CIA hand Lou Anthony, something of a renegade. Anthony brings in his best field agent, moody Jim Gadsden, to mount a one-man operation to retrieve Belden and the bomb. Gadsden's past includes a breakdown, but he soldiers on and manages to foil an array of villains, including a very high KGB mole in the CIA. All of this is highly improbable: the president doesn't know about Belden's Idaho odyssey; a KGB hardliner runs an independent operation; Lou Anthony is practically running his own independent operation; and Gadsden acts more like an automaton than a human being. Still, the story moves quickly and Reed's prose is fresh and imagistic, though occasionally given to absurdities as when Gadsden, parachuting into Belden's wintry hideaway, listens ``to the soft rustle of the falling snow.'' An epilogue leaves little doubt that a sequel is planned. (Mar.)