BOX 88 by Charles Cumming

Published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Mysterious Press on January 11, 2022

Lachlan Kite works for an off-the-books organization created by intelligence agents from the US and the UK. The organization, known as BOX 88, hasn’t been authorized by either government. Few people know that it exists, although key CIA and MI6 agents divert their agency funds to BOX 88.

Kite was born and raised in Scotland, where his parents operated a hotel. When his father died, his mother sent him to Alford, a boarding school for the elite that Kite attended on a scholarship. Kite got into the requisite amount of boarding school trouble, usually in the company of his friend Xavier Bonnard, the son of an elite father. A “beak” (teacher) at Alford named Billy Peele spotted Kite’s potential for intelligence work and recruited him into BOX 88. Kite’s friendship with Xavier positioned him for a special assignment before he started college.

The story begins with Kite attending Xavier’s funeral. He meets a woman who has a flawed cover story. Kite correctly assumes that the woman is with MI5 and that she’s investigating BOX 88. Kite also meets an Iranian who claims to have been a friend of Xavier. Kite is inclined to believe the Iranian until he’s kidnapped and interrogated. The kidnapper questions Kite about his first mission. Kite weaves a story while denying that he was a spy when he visited the vacation home of Xavier’s family in France. As Kite answers or dodges questions, he recalls his childhood, recruitment, and efforts to gather intelligence on an Iranian guest of Xavier’s father, Luc Bonnard. He also recalls the passion he felt for Martha Raine.

Most spy novels are about betrayal. Kite feels that he is betraying his friendship with Xavier by taking advantage of the friendship to spy on Luc Bonnard’s Iranian friend. He feels that he is at least indirectly spying on Xavier’s family, a feeling that intensifies as Kite’s mission continues. In the present, Kite comes to feel that he has been betraying his wife by concealing the truth about his occupation, particularly after the kidnapper tries to gain leverage over Kite by threatening to kill his wife.

Charles Cumming balances action and characterization as the novel switches between Kite’s captivity in the present and his intelligence gathering as a teen. Both the scenes in Kite’s teen years and in the present build suspense. Aspects of the ending come as a surprise.

BOX 88 is apparently an origin story, the first in a series of books that will feature Kite and his clandestine organization. I hope that’s true. Cumming’s spy novels have generally been enjoyable if a bit uneven. BOX 88 is one of his best.

RECOMMENDED

The Contract by Gerald Seymour

First published in 1980

Gerald Seymour is one of the spy thriller genre’s best practitioners. The Contract is among his best efforts. The setup is crafted in meticulous detail. The action that follows builds relentless tension. The ending might be shocking to readers who are unfamiliar with Seymour’s tendency to avoid the sentimental or predictable.

A young man named Willi Guttman becomes sexually involved with a young English woman. The woman is in Geneva, working for the WHO. Willi lives in Moscow, but he meets the woman while working as an interpreter for the Soviet delegation to the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament. When the woman tells Willi that she is pregnant and needs his support, he agrees to defect so he can be with her.

After Willi fakes his death, the British SIS smuggles him out of Geneva and takes him to a safe house in England. They promise to reunite him with his girlfriend after he divulges all the secrets he knows. Unfortunately, he knows very little of value. His father, however, is Otto Gutttman, a prominent scientist who the Russians appropriated from Germany after the war. Otto now develops classified anti-tank technology for the Soviet Union. The British would love to get their hands on Otto. They see Willi as the means of inducing Otto’s defection.

The SIS learns from Willi that Otto takes an annual summer vacation in Magdeburg, his home town in East Germany. Henry Carter and his boss, Charles Mawby, devise a scheme to contact Otto in Magdeburg, alert him to Willi’s status as a defector, and convince him to join Willi in the west. To accomplish those goals, they hire a contractor. Johnny Donoghue is a former military intelligence officer who was separated from his employment in disgrace after mistaking a young girl in Northern Ireland for a terrorist and killing her. Johnny is fluent in German and, given his intelligence background, is seen as an ideal off-the-books operative.

The plan is to bring Otto and Willi’s sister to Berlin, where they will use forged identity papers and travel permits to enter West Germany, posing as West German citizens. In Seymour novels, plans hatched by SIS bureaucrats never go as planned. Johnny is eventually left with nothing but his wits and courage as he tries to bring Otto and Otto’s daughter out of East Germany. Fear of a bad outcome is palpable, heightened by the concern that Seymour nurtures for the welfare of the elderly Otto and his devoted daughter.

Excitement and dread build in equal measures as Seymour makes rapid shifts from scene to scene. He puts the reader into the heads of Johnny, Willi, bureaucrats on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and even the British Prime Minister, a man who isn’t happy to learn that the SIS, not for the first time, is keeping him in the dark about operations that could have a catastrophic impact on diplomacy if they go sideways.

Seymour’s attention to characterization and his intricate plotting place him on the top shelf of spy novelists. He doesn’t have the style of John Le Carré — few writers do — but his prose is crisp. The Contract is one of the best novels to explore the balance between the desire for freedom on the repressive side of the Iron Curtain and the desire to collect intelligence at any cost on the western side.

RECOMMENDED

Damascus Station by David McCloskey

Publsihed by ‎ W. W. Norton & Company on October 5, 2021

Damascus Station does what a spy thriller should do. It engages the imagination with tradecraft, appeals to the intellect with political intrigue, and excites the senses with action scenes. Some of the action takes place in the bedroom (or other convenient locations). More violent scenes play out in the streets and buildings of Damascus.

Much of the story takes place in Syria, where a brutal dictatorship is fighting a war against rebels. Samuel Joseph works for the CIA. His Levantine Arabic is flawless. He begins the novel in Damascus, where he has been sent to exfiltrate an asset, as well as Val Owens, the asset’s handler who is in Syria under diplomatic cover. The mission does not go well, particularly for Val.

A well-educated woman named Miriam, a Syrian general’s daughter, secretly opposes the government that employs her. Miriam’s cousin Razan makes no effort to hide her disdain for the Syrian president. She gets away with it because her father has a position in the government that allows him to shield her.

Sam is sent to Paris, where Miriam is attempting to coerce a brave Syrian woman into returning to Syria and renouncing her criticism of the Syrian regime. Miriam must threaten harm to the woman’s family to carry out her mission, threats that cause her to despise herself. Sam’s task is to recruit Miriam as a double agent for the CIA. The task is easy to accomplish, both because Miriam hates the ruling regime and because she feels an immediate sexual attraction to Sam. The rules prohibit Sam from acting on that attraction, but rules have never stopped fictional spies from hopping into bed with assets. Sam puts his career at risk and, as is the custom in novels of this nature, falls in love with Miriam.

Miriam is the kind of character a reader might love, as well. She’s intelligent, a fierce warrior, and willing to take risks to fight the leaders she serves. Sam is your prototypical spy, stalwart and loyal and an all-around good guy apart from his inability to keep it in his pants. My favorite character might be the tough chief of station in Damascus. She’s vulgar, lethal with a shotgun, and proclaims herself (with some justification) to be the Angel of Death.

The plot takes Sam to Damascus, where he follows Miriam as her handler, using the usual diplomatic cover for his spying. Spy novels are all about betrayal, and the time comes when Sam must question whether Miriam is playing him. That’s the kind of plot point that makes espionage novels so addictive.

Word gets the US that the Syrian president intends to use sarin gas to wipe out a city in rebellion. That’s a step too far for the US, as is the capture and beheading of an American. The US intends a targeted assassination in retribution for the murder and selective bombing to prevent the use of sarin. The story eventually brings the US and Syria to the brink (or slightly over the brink) of war. By the end, Sam and Miriam are both in peril. Quick thinking and sacrifice offers the only hope of averting disaster.

The story features the usual tradecraft — a good thing, because tradecraft establishes a spy novel’s identity — including dead drops and (perhaps too many) surveillance detection routes, all taught to Miriam in a frenzy. The theme of a spy breaking the rules by getting sexually involved with a source that he’s running is familiar, but it’s a credible theme that works well in the context of the story. The action scenes in the novel’s second half justify the novel’s categorization as a thriller. The balance between action, political intrigue, and relationship drama is just about perfect. And the ending, without being artificially happy, is at least hopeful.

RECOMMENDED

Red Traitor by Owen Matthews

Published by Doubleday on July 20, 2021

Notwithstanding its unfortunate title, Red Traitor is a smart, entertaining spy novel that is told from an unusual perspective. Although a few American characters appear, the protagonist and most of the key characters are Russian. The story primarily alternates between Moscow and a Russian submarine near Cuba. The events are loosely based on a Cold War incident in which Russian submarines were armed with nuclear torpedoes, and on a Russian (the traitor in the title) who provided clandestine information to the United States.

The novel takes place during the Kennedy Administration. Russia is establishing a military presence in Cuba and America is on the brink of war. The more important war that the story showcases is between two intelligence agencies in the USSR: the KGB and the GRU.

Alexander Vasin is a lieutenant colonel in the KGB and a favorite of his superior, Lieutenant General Yury Orlov. Vasin became a favorite by blaming a problem on an American spy. While the details of Vasin’s previous mission are described in Black Sun, it isn’t necessary to read Black Sun to understand Red Traitor.

Vasin invented the American spy, but Orlov doesn’t know that, or perhaps doesn’t care. Orlov’s mission is to undermine General Ivan Serov, head of the GRU and his chief rival for power. To that end, Orlov wants to prove that the spy works for Serov. Orlov has a candidate in mind — Oleg Morozov, a colonel in the GRU — but has only circumstantial proof that Morozov is a traitor. Orlov wants Vasin to find evidence that Morozov is a spy and isn’t overly concerned whether the evidence reflects reality.

Morozov has been behaving suspiciously, in part by collecting information from Sofia Guzman, a translator who has access to information about a secret project. The project involves the installation of long-range missile bases in Cuba. News of the project has made its way to American intelligence, making Morozov the likely source of the leak.

Vasin learns of a related project — the arming of submarines with nuclear torpedoes that are sailing to Cuba. Kennedy is creating a naval blockade around Cuba. A Russian lunatic, without the knowledge of Khrushchev, has ordered the submarine commander to launch the torpedo if the Russian subs are attacked while trying to run the blockade. Vasin knows that this will trigger a nuclear war and the likely destruction of Russia. He resolves to use his own initiative to stop the war, even if doing so might make him a traitor.

Part of the action takes place on one of the subs, where the fleet commander is at odds with a submarine captain who is eager to fire the first strike. Much of the novel’s tension comes from that underwater conflict, although Vasin’s tricky relationships with Orlov, Morozov, and Guzman add to the drama.

Like Black Sun, Red Traitor succeeds in part because the story is based on real events and in part because Vasin is a dark character who does not equate loyalty to his county to loyalty to autocrats who are willing to harm his country to achieve their personal ends. Owen Matthews keeps the various plot elements in constant motion, building suspense that is only partially tempered by the reader’s knowledge that nuclear war did not break out in 1962. Exactly how that war will be prevented, however, is something that the reader won’t know until late in the novel. The second Vasin novel is as strong as the first, making Matthews’ unusual look at espionage from a Russian perspective a good choice for fans of spy fiction.

RECOMMENDED

The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman

Published by Knopf on July 6, 2021

In a certain kind of spy novel, nothing is as it seems. There are secrets within secrets. False identities conceal other false identities. Telling the good guys from the bad, the truth from lies, becomes as difficult for the reader as it is for the protagonist. Spy novels of that nature are good fun when they are handled skillfully. The Cover Wife is Dan Fesperman’s tutorial in deception.

Professor Winston Armitage, a scholar of Aramaic and Arabic languages, has written a book that contends the Quran has been mistranslated. The virgins that have been promised to martyrs are actually raisins or white grapes. Since terrorists would be unlikely to sacrifice their lives for raisins in the afterlife, even particularly delicious raisins, the book is intended to cause a stir in the terrorist community. At least, the CIA hopes that will be the result. Armitage is going on a book tour at the CIA’s expense, a scheme of information warfare cooked up by Paul Bridger, who manages operations across Europe.

Claire Saylor has a complicated history with Bridger. He assigns Claire to the team that will guard Armitage. She will play the role of Armitage’s wife. In an unofficial role, Bridger wants Claire to conduct surveillance in Hamburg. She conducts unofficial surveillance of her own and photographs someone in Hamburg who might be running the operation, using Bridger as a front.

Two other characters in Hamburg are important to the story. One is a young man named Mahmoud who seems to be a willing and eager recruit to Osama bin Laden’s cause. The other is Ken Donlan, an FBI agent in Hamburg who has worked with Claire in the past. Claire and Ken encounter each other while they are both keeping a clandestine eye on Mahmoud.

They observe that Mahmoud seems to be getting along well with a group of young Muslims who are associated with terrorism. One member of the group is getting married. Another of Mahmoud's friends is already married but is being sent away on a mission. The young man’s headstrong wife entreats Mahmoud to talk her husband out of doing whatever he has been assigned to do. Mahmoud is enchanted and unnerved by the woman’s beauty. Even seeing her uncovered face seems like a sin for which he will need to atone. Mahmoud feels torn by divided loyalty to his friend and to a woman who will be at risk if she interferes with his friend’s assignment.

The plot could move in many directions. Part of the intrigue is generated by uncertainty. What is the story about? What is Bridger’s endgame? Who is the mysterious man in Claire’s photograph? What plan is taking Mahmoud and his friends away from Hamburg? The questions eventually converge, yielding a surprising answer that causes the reader to rethink assumptions about how the plot has unfolded. Fesperman misleads the reader, but only because his characters are misled. In fact, the reader will come to understand the story’s key truth before it becomes apparent to the characters.

Claire and Ken are reasonably complex and likable characters. They play the civil servant role that is common in espionage thrillers — spies who want to do the right thing but haven’t been told the secrets that will help them understand what is right and what is wrong. They work for bureaucrats who are also common in spy thrillers, employees who have risen in the ranks because of their ability to stab others in the back to protect their positions.

Fesperman conceived an excellent idea and avoided being overly ambitious in its execution. He puts all of those elements into play to tell a relatively simple story that seems complex to the characters, simply because they aren’t allowed to see the big picture. For pulling off a credible surprise — the kind of surprise that, when the truth dawns on the reader, will provoke an “Oh wow” — at the end of an entertaining story, Fesperman earns an easy recommendation.

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