CIA

THE SHADOW NETWORK . . . Between the covers

Suspected war criminal Hannibal Strauss, a mercenary suspected of war crimes in Libya, Cambodia and elsewhere, is in custody near The Hague awaiting trial before the International *Criminal Court. The wheels of international war crimes justice grind extremely slowly, and as lawyers jostle for position, there is a terrorist outrage in the Netherlands capital. Gunmen open fire on a crowded square, the Grote Markt, killing not only individuals connected with the impending court case, but dozens of random civilians, too. One man involved in the Strauss case, Kon Frankowski, escapes and goes on the run.

*Factual note: the International Criminal Court (ICC) is separate and different from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ is part of the United Nations, and investigates countries. The ICC investigates individuals, and is recognised by some – but not all – countries, a notable exception being Russia. Very few people have been convicted and jailed by the ICC, one being Charles Taylor, the former leader of Liberia. A third and unconnected organisation, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, did convict and jail Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, while Slobodan Milošević died while his trial was in progress.

The mastermind behind the slaughter is an International terrorist known only as The Monk. His organisation has its roots in a pro-Tsarist resistance movement known as the Mladorossi. It has evolved over the decades, but remains a massive threat to international security.

Answering the call to investigate the Grote Markt massacre are Joe Dempsey, and agent with the (fictional) International Security Bureau, and his partner, criminal barrister Michael Devlin. They seem an unlikely pairing, to be honest. Dempsey is Special Forces trained, has killed many men in the course of his job, while Devlin is undoubtedly clever, but I’m not sure what his interlocutory skill brings to the table outside of the interview room. Hey ho, though, it’s a novel, so let’s run with it.

The reason why Frankowski is at the centre of this is that he was money-launderer-in-chief to Hannibal Strauss, and the Hungarian mercenary has entrusted Frankowski with a list of all Russian Mladorossi agents and how they are embedded across the world. This list – in the right/wrong – hands would almost certainly be the end for The Monk and his machinations. Joe Dempsey, however, has a rather delicate personal connection to Frankowski. Frankowski’s wife Maria is the former lover of Dempsey, who reluctantly ended the relationship because of the danger his work would bring to them if they became a family.

While Dempsey and Devlin are on the ground in the Netherlands, Agent Eden Grace – Dempsey’s ISB protégé, is handling things in America, and it is there that Maria Frankowski and her children have gone into hiding, as they have become an pawns in the violent chess game which seeks to find Kon Frankowski and the fatal list.

In all good spy thrillers, we must never take the author’s word that people are who we are told they are, and The Shadow Network is no exception.The Monk is hiding in plain sight, and neither we – nor Dempsey and Devlin – have a clue as to who he really is. This is a thoroughly entertaining thriller with fight scenes so real that just reading them may necessitate a visit to A & E with sympathetic wounds and trauma. It is published by Elliot and Thompson and will available on 15th February. Tony Kent, by the way, is that most unusual of pairings – a criminal barrister and heavyweight boxer. Cross him at your peril!

February 14, 2024 0

THE SPY COAST . . . Between the covers

Have you ever wondered were CIA spooks go when they are pensioned off? Tess Gerritsen tells us that a number of them have settled down in the tiny Maine harbour town of Purity. Among them is Maggie Bird, once a stone cold killer for the Company, but now just a chicken farmer with the common ailments – such as aching joints – shared by all senior citizens. Her neighbours are mostly of a similar age and background – particularly Ben Diamond, Declan Rose and the elderly couple Lloyd and Ingrid Slocum.

When Maggie is visited by a current CIA operative, a young woman who identifies herself only as Bianca, she is reminded of an unwelcome part of her past, in the shape of a fellow agent called Diana Ward. Ward is still active, but has gone missing, her bosses are concerned, and are offering to pay Maggie to help trace the missing woman. Maggie rejects the offer, saying she does not care if Ward is dead or alive.

Why the indifference? It is, as they say, complicated, and we learn that Ward and Maggie go back a long way, with the pivotal point in their professional relationship being an attempt, years earlier to take out a British wheeler-dealer – and international gangster – called Phillip Hardwicke. Long story short, the end result was a CIA sting that ended in disaster for Maggie. Her doctor husband, Danny, had been working as Hardwicke’s personal physician, and a private jet they were were traveling in left Malta, only to explode mid-air and crash into the sea with the loss of all on board.

Back in present day Maine, Maggie is with her friends, discussing the mysterious visit of Bianca, when she hears that police have surrounded her house. Rushing home to investigate, she finds there is a corpse lying in the frozen snow of her driveway. It is the woman who called herself Bianca, and she has been tortured bt then professionally despatched with two bullets to the head.

Maggie realises that the carnage is all about her and her past and so reluctantly she packs a few things, arranges some chicken-sitters, and goes back on the road to see if she can exorcise the ghosts of her past. Her travels take her into immediate and present danger, in Thailand and across Europe. My copy of the book came with a couple of cocktail recipes (above). The Spy Coast has all the hallmarks of a classic mainstream American thriller – taut as piano wire, danger round every corner and with convincing portraits of exotic locations.

February 1, 2024 1

THE SHOT . . . Between the covers

The late Philip Kerr is justifiably renowned for his magisterial series of fourteen historical books featuring the sardonic German copper Bernie Gunther. Kerr, however, was good enough – and confident enough – to write superior stand-alone novels. I read one such – Hitler’s Peace – earlier this year and if you click the link it will take you to the review.

Quercus has just republished The Shot, a 1999 novel by Kerr. We are in America and it is the late autumn of 1960. In the pop charts, The Drifters were singing Save The Last Dance For Me, and a youthful looking senator called John Fitzgerald Kennedy had just won the election to become the thirty-fifth President of The United States.

Just a hundred miles or so from the tip of the Florida peninsula lies the island of Cuba, but its traditional role as puppet state of America, complete with Mafia-owned casinos, sex clubs and hedonistic lifestyles came to an end in 1958 when communist rebels, led by Fidel Castro, finally overturned the regime of Fulgencio Batista. Cubans have fled in their thousands to Florida, while the American government looks across the waters for signs of Russian influence over the fledgling state.

Central to the story of The Shot is an American assassin who calls himself Tom Jefferson. We never learn his real identity. We only know that his aliases are always those of American Presidents, such as Franklin Pierce and Martin Van Buren. Tom is a military trained sniper who earns his living killing political targets by blowing off the tops of their skulls with a .30 calibre bullet.

As ever with a Philip Kerr novel, we are in a world populated by a mix of fictional characters and real-life figures. Among the latter are Jack Kennedy himself and the Mob boss Sam Giancana. Giancana hires Jefferson to assassinate Fidel Castro so that the revolution will collapse, and the mafioso can return to their old lucrative ways. Jefferson does his homework and seems all set to put a bullet in Castro’s head.

In the wake of 22nd November 1963, Jack Kennedy achieved temporary sainthood, and it is only relatively recently that his less-than-saintly private life has become common knowledge. When one of his exploits affects Tom Jefferson personally, the whole plan to kill Castro is turned on its head. Jefferson goes missing, and becomes the object of a manhunt by the FBI, the CIA and the Mafia.

This novel shows Philip Kerr at his wondrous best. The historical characters are made flesh in front of our eyes, while the fictional participants are vividly convincing. Kerr’s grasp of history is immense, and he serves up a winning mixture of The Day Of The Jackal and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. The Shot is out now.

September 2, 2020 0

THE ARTEMIS FILE . . . Between the covers

t takes a very ingenious – not to say devious mind – to fashion a fiction plot which meshes together a whole bagful of disparate elements to make a satisfying whole that challenges the imagination but does not exceed it in possibility. Adam Loxley has done just that in his latest thriller The Artemis File. George Wiggins is Mr Ordinary. He lives in what would have been called, years ago, a bijou residence in the twee Kentish town of Tenterden. He is not Mr Stupid, however. He travels into ‘town’ each day to sit at his desk in Fleet Street where he composes the daily crossword for The Chronicle under his pseudonym Xerxes. Aficionados know that in reality, all that is left of the newspaper industry in Fleet Street are the buildings, and the use of the term to denote popular journalism, but we can forgive Loxley for having the good, old-fashioned Chronicle hanging on by the skin of its teeth when all its fellows have decamped to Wapping or soulless suburbs somewhere off a dual carriageway.

When George has a rather startling experience in his local pub after a couple of pints of decent beer, the other elements of the story – MI5, the CIA, Russian agents, immaculately dressed but ruthless Whitehall civil servants and, most crucially, the most infamous unsolved incident of the late 20^th century – are soon thrown into the mix. Such is George’s conformity, it is easily compromised, and he is blackmailed into writing a crossword, the answers to which are deeply significant to a very select group of individuals who sit at the centres of various spiders’ webs where they tug the strands which control the national security of the great powers.

eorge Wiggins might have been easily duped and he has few means to fight back, but he recruits an old chum from the Chronicle whose knowledge of the historical events of the 1990s proves key to unraveling the mystery of who wanted the crossword published – and why. While the pair rescue a dusty file from an obscure repository and pore over its contents, elsewhere a much more visceral struggle is playing out. A ruthless MI5 contract ‘fixer’ called Craven is engaged on a courtly dance of death with a former CIA agent, current American operatives and their Russian counterparts.

One of the joys of this book is Loxley’s delight in guiding us through various parts of England that he clearly loves. Winchester, the Vale of Itchen, various ‘secret’ London places – we track the characters as they play out the fateful – and frequently bloody – drama against fascinating backdrops. We are linked into real events such as the mysterious death of intelligence ‘spook’ Gareth Williams, and the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. We learn that the truth behind the events of 31^st August 1997 has become an chip in an international poker game with world peace at stake. Just when we think that things have been wrapped up sweetly, however, Loxley has one final ace to play, and he lays it down with, literally, the last few words of the book.

The Artemis File is published by Matador and is available now. Adam Loxley lives in the Weald of Kent. Other than creative writing his passions are making music, world cinema and contemporary art. The first book in this series was The Teleios Ring, and the concluding novel The Oedipus Gate is currently in manuscript.