Winter Work by Dan Fesperman

Published by Knopf on July 12, 2022

Most of spy fiction’s best novels are set in the Cold War. Winter Work comes at the end of that war. The Berlin Wall has been down for about four months. East Germany is transitioning to unification. The Stasi offices are closed; files that were not burned are being ransacked or sold.

Emil Grimm is a former Stasi officer who is now unemployed. He had a desk job, running the Stasi operation to spy on NATO. He worries that the unified Germany will prosecute him for treason, as if he had some duty to be loyal to West Germany when he was a citizen of East Germany. His more urgent concern is how to pay for his wife’s medical treatment until reunification brings her into (West) Germany’s system of free healthcare. Emil’s wife is dying of a progressive disease and can no longer move.

Emil has a dacha outside Berlin and an apartment in the city, closer to his shuttered headquarters. One of his neighbors, Lothar Fischer, is also a Stasi officer. On his morning walk, Emil discovers Lothar’s body. The Stasi are already there, supposedly investigating, but they are soon chased away by the local police, who feel empowered to do their jobs now that the Stasi are no longer a thing.

Lothar apparently shot himself. Emil knows he was murdered. Emil also knows that Lothar was up to something. Emil knows that because he was up to something with Lothar.

On the novel’s other front, the CIA’s DDO is trying to get in bed with a Russian who wants to sell the identities of all the former Stasi agents. Claire Saylor (a key characters in The Cover Wife) has been contacting former Stasi agents to see if they have information they want to sell. She’s going behind her boss’ back to get off-the-books help from Clark Baucom, a retired CIA agent. The DDO assigns another agent to keep her under control. That agent also has a central role in The Cover Wife, making Winter Work the origin story of their teamwork.

Claire and her partner take an interest in Emil. That interest leads to conflict with the Russian and to escalating tension as the story nears its climax. The action is never over-the-top — this isn’t a tough guy novel — but the risks faced by the novel’s central characters create fear that the reader shares.

Dan Fesperman is a reliable spy novelist. Winter Work is rooted in Cold War history, as Fesperman explains in his acknowledgements. I don’t usually read acknowledgements, but Fesperman’s explanation of CIA and Russian activities soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall adds interest to the story.

Given the horrible reputation of the Stasi, it’s intriguing that Fesperman makes Emil a sympathetic figure. As Claire notes, Emil is “an adversary who has already been defeated.” He doesn’t seem to deserve further punishment, particularly the kind of punishment that will be awaiting him if he’s caught. Emil’s disabled wife encouraged him to form a sexual bond with her caretaker. Emil’s devotion to both of them, the fact that he didn’t actually order anyone’s death as a Stasi agent, and his remorse for being on the wrong side of history make it possible for the reader to hope he survives. In the tradition of strong spy novels, Winter Work illustrates how fuzzy the line between good guys and bad guys can become in the shadowy world of espionage.

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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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Safe Houses by Dan Fesperman

Published by Knopf on July 3, 2018

Safe Houses draws some of its background from a government spy agency called the Pond that was in a rivalry with the OSS (and later the CIA) before the government disbanded it in 1955. The Pond then continued its existence as a private organization because people who like to think they are doing important work sometimes have difficulty admitting that they are no longer the center of the universe.

Safe Houses is told in two alternating time frames. Part of the story takes place in 1979, when Helen Abell, new to her CIA posting in Berlin, is placed in charge of safe houses, an administrative duty deemed suitable for a woman. While making an unscheduled inspection of a safe house, visitors arrive and she overhears (and accidentally records) part of their conversation. She doesn’t know who they are or how one of them got a key; neither man is one of the six people who are authorized to have one. They seem to be talking in a sort of code. Later, she tells Clark Baucom about it. Baucom is her lover and a much older field agent. He tells her to burn the tape and never disclose what she heard to anyone. Of course, the obscure references on the tape to “the Pond” eventually gain clarity.

When she returns to the safe house to retrieve the tape, another visitor shows up (an agent she knows) and she overhears a sexual assault in progress. Helen intervenes, but her intervention puts her career is in jeopardy. Her life is also in jeopardy after it becomes clear that she intends to expose a CIA assassin who is also a serial rapist. That part of the story has Helen fleeing Berlin and making contact with a couple of female CIA employees who may or may not be on her side.

The other part of the story begins in 2014, when a Maryland woman and her husband are shot dead in their bed by their developmentally disabled son, Willard. Henry Mattick is in town when it happens, conducting a clandestine investigation into the family for a reason he doesn’t understand. When the son’s sister Anna wants to hire Henry to find the reason for the murders, Henry’s employer tells him to accept the assignment, to get inside the house, and to make copies of any documents he can find. It won’t be surprising to the reader that the 2014 story quickly links to the 1979 story.

Despite its lurid subject matter, Safe Houses is told in a measured style that lends credibility to the narrative. The plot blends suspense with enough action to keep the story moving at a good pace, but Dan Fesperman doesn’t short-change characterization. The novel is a bit short of atmosphere (other than place names, it doesn’t convey much sense of being in Berlin or any of the novel’s other locations), although Fesperman does an excellent job of conveying the limitations that were placed on women in society (and particularly in male-dominated organizations like the CIA) in 1979. In a time when the #MeToo movement is focusing attention on how powerful men feel empowered to abuse women, Safe Houses shines a spotlight on the importance of standing up for what’s right, and on the risks that people take when they decide to do the right thing.

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