The Spy Who Vanished by Alma Katsu

Published by Amazon Original Stories on July 18, 2024

The Spy Who Vanished is the name given to its three parts collectively. Each part is available individually from Amazon as part of its Original Stories series. The cover shown above belongs to the first story. Kindle users who don’t belong to Kindle Unlimited must purchase and download all three if they want to have a meaningful reading experience, as none of the three parts stand alone. Together they are a novella (and also a marketing tool for Kindle Unlimited).

Yuri Kozlov is a Russian agent. Putin assigned him to pose as a defector to gain access to the CIA. He’s supposed to report everything he learns to the Kremlin if he manages to worm secrets out of the agents who are subjecting him to a friendly interrogation. Putin is particularly eager to learn the identity of a CIA mole who is suspected of having infiltrated Russian intelligence. If not for the CIA’s track record of indiscretion, it would be difficult to swallow Yuri's almost immediate acquisition of that information,

In addition to gathering intelligence, Yuri is told to find and kill a Russian defector, Maxim Sokolov. Putin wants him eliminated because he knows something embarrassing about Putin that he apparently hasn’t revealed. There is hardly reason to fear that Sokolov will spill the beans after all these years, but Putin is paranoid. It seems unlikely that Yuri can accomplish all these tasks without being killed or captured, but Putin probably thinks that's Yuri's problem to worry about.

Yuri learns that Sokolov died in a car accident but that he married and had a daughter. Yuri’s handler conveys that intelligence, then tells Yuri that Putin wants the wife and daughter eliminated. Yuri comes to learn that Sokolov’s daughter is someone he has met, someone he likes.

Yuri is not nuanced. He doesn't do moral dilemmas. You point him at a target, he destroys it, that's his life. Yet he killed an innocent girl once and has been at least mildly haunted by it. He wonders how he will feel if he kills an innocent girl he knows. I give Alma Katsu credit for giving Yuri even this modest amount of depth.

Setting aside the improbable plot, the story works best as a psychological profile of a Russian agent who (1) feels disrespected by handlers who view him as an uneducated thug with a talent for assassination, and (2) kind of enjoys the benefits of western life, but (3) only feels at home in Russia and worries that he’ll always be looking over his shoulder for a Russian assassin if he actually defects and stays in the US. The story’s mild dramatic tension derives from that dilemma: should be stay (in the US as a defector) or should he go (back to Russia after succeeding or failing in his mission)?

While the story is nicely executed, it lacks substance and credibility. Alma Katsu’s character sketch of Yuri is convincing but the plot is not. Nor is the story sufficiently eventful or surprising to pay a strong reward to a reader who consumes all three parts. Maybe Katsu will eventually expand it into a more satisfying novel, although it’s difficult to see where else the story could go.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Ilium by Lea Carpenter

Published by Knopf on January 16, 2024

Many thrillers, particularly spy novels, attempt a slow build to a startling climax, only to disappoint. Ilium succeeds. While spy novels often depict espionage as a dirty business, few illustrate its big-picture futility as effectively as Ilium.

Edouard and Dasha worked together in Russian intelligence before they entered into a marriage of convenience. Dasha was a widow. She wanted a father for her daughter Nikki and Edouard was happy to have a daughter. In any event, Edouard’s boss told him he needed a wife, so Edouard chose one who happened to be nearby. It was easy for Dasha to say yes. Edouard’s father was one of Russia’s original oligarchs, so Edouard could offer Dasha and Nikki a very comfortable life.

Two weeks after they married, Edouard was in bed with Sophie in Beirut. He promised her a family but neglected to mention Dasha and Nikki. Sophie gave him a son named Felix but suffered a tragic end that sets the story in motion. Edouard worships Felix but Dasha views him as a reminder of Edouard’s infidelity.

Before he became a spy for the Russian government, Edouard had a successful career in the military. Although Edouard is getting old, he is such a successful spy that the CIA, Mossad, and MI6 track his every move. The intelligence agencies are after revenge. Russia may agree that Edouard’s personal vendetta has gone too far.

The central character of Ilium is an unnamed woman from London who tells her part of the story in the first person. In her early years, the narrator was empty and vulnerable, making her the perfect target for recruitment as an intelligence asset. At a party, she met a successful American named Marcus. She was 21 and he was in his early 50s. To her surprise — because she is convinced that she is not special in any way — Marcus married her. The marriage will not last long because Marcus is dying — a fact he chooses not to disclose until after their wedding. When Marcus tells her, he reveals his other life-changing secret.

Marcus wants the narrator to perform a task. Her job is simple: infiltrate and listen. Her cover identity as a fledgling art dealer is a bit more complex. The narrator tackles the job with enthusiasm because she would do anything for Marcus. She’s excited to do anything at all to enliven a life that, before Marcus, was without color or purpose.

Marcus introduces the narrator to a Lebanese man named Raja, a man who — like Marcus — is not what he appears to be. Raja creates a pretext that allows the narrator to visit Edouard’s home in Cap Ferret. Raja only wants her to learn whether Edouard is there. Since he is not, Raja arranges her return on a new pretext. This time she stays for a bit and gets to know the family. Felix, in particular, bonds with her, perhaps because he feels unloved by his stepmother and stepsister. The narrator’s task remains the same: determine whether Edouard is there and, if so, when he will be leaving.

The reader and the narrator will intuit that Raja will use the narrator’s information in a way that will not be good for Edouard. While there is little reason to feel compassion for Edouard (or for his wife and stepdaughter), he is kind to the narrator, perhaps because of her resemblance to Sophie. The reader will likely share the narrator’s fear that Felix’s life is about to be upended.

We learn in the novel’s closing pages that Edouard must be removed from the game because a mistake gave birth to a reprisal that fueled the desire for revenge. The games never end. “All the wars which were really just one war, the targeting and developing of assets, the unending plays for power and redemption, self-loathing gradually obliterated by pride in the mission, good work, ‘the long game’.”

I appreciated the precision of Lea Carpenter’s insightful prose and the elegant style in which the story is told. Here’s an example that merges insight and elegance: “War endures by design. The history of war is a history of romance and mission, of malice slapping the wrist of good intent. The history of war is a history of action, reaction, repeat. War is tragedy, and tragedy, as Aristotle knew, is a game of subtraction, a game of loss.”

The Iliad and The Odyssey provide a recurring backdrop to the story. The narrator has no education beyond high school, but she is exposed to various interpretations of Homer’s epic works as the novel unfolds. Carpenter returns to Homer at the end of the story when she argues that Priam and Achilles provide an example of men who are able to set aside their lust for war and vengeance and discover, through conversation, that they share the experience of loss, that revenge never satisfies. That lesson is ably taught in a novel that goes beyond the cloak-and-dagger trappings of spy novels to explore deeper questions about conflicts between nations and the forces that shape lives.

RECOMMENDED

Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming

Published by Mysterious Press on November 7, 2023

Kennedy 35 is the third installment in Charles Cumming’s BOX 88 series of espionage novels. The protagonist, Lachlan Kite, is now the head of BOX 88, an off-the-books, ultra-secret organization that brings together agents from American and British intelligence agencies.

Kite is married but separated from his wife. He begins the novel in Sweden, where his wife is a physician who recently gave birth to his daughter. He hopes to spend several weeks with his family, perhaps repairing his relationship with his wife, but his plans change when he gets a message from Eric Appiah, a friend from Senegal who went to school with Kite. Appiah does some freelance work for BOX 88. If me wants to meet with Kite, the meeting must be important.

Having learned a lesson about trying to maintain a relationship while concealing the nature of his work, Kite tells his wife as much as he can about Appiah. His story takes him back to 1995. Kite was sent to Senegal with his girlfriend, Martha Raines, who was there to complete his cover as a backpacking tourist. He was to play a collateral role in a plan to kidnap Augustin Bagaza, a Rwandan Hutu who shared responsibility for the genocide of the Tutsi people. Bagaza is in Senegal with his Congolese Hutu girlfriend, Grace Mavinga, a woman who delighted in murdering the Tutsi. France was complicit in the genocide and may have an interest in protecting Bagaza to safeguard its shaky international reputation.

About half of Kennedy 35 follows Kite’s mission as he travels through dangerous cities, maintaining surveillance of Bagaza in anticipation that BOX 88 operatives will snatch him before he and Mavinga can flee the country. Kite’s role in the mission becomes more dangerous when Philippe Vauban, a French journalist with PTSD whose Tutsi girlfriend was murdered by Bagaza, suffers a psychotic episode and decides to embark on a mission of revenge.

Cumming crafts tense scenes as Kite moves from boring afternoons in a small Senagalese resort to the adrenalin rush of surveillance and tradecraft in the space of a few days. The story from 1995 ends with a shootout and Mavinga’s flight from the country.

The rest of the novel takes place in 2022, beginning with Kite’s contact with Appiah. An American writer/podcaster, Lucian Cablean, has tumbled to the story of Bagaza’s disappearance in 1995 and has heard rumors about Kite’s secret organization. To protect BOX 88, Kite meets with Cablean, learns of a friend’s death, discovers that Cablean has also been targeted, and tracks down Martha Raines and Mavinga. The second half of the novel is interesting but less compelling than the story set in Senegal.

The 1995 story works because Cumming has mastered the creation of atmosphere. The smells, sounds, and tastes of Dakar become part of the story, complete with potholes and noisy motorbikes and unreliable taxis, dance clubs populated by wealthy men and beautiful young hookers. Cumming also captures the pain of a genocide that American media barely reported. Some genocides are important to Americans and others involve victims who don’t have white skin.

While the novel’s second half features less action, Cumming does imagine a clever plan to protect the secrecy of BOX 88. While the novel is self-contained, the ending might be described as a cliffhanger, as it ends with Kite taking a disturbing telephone call that seems likely to upend his life. I didn’t need that incentive to look forward to Cumming’s next novel, as he has firmly established himself as one of the better spy novelists currently working in the genre.

RECOMMENDED

The Traitor by Ava Glass

Published by Bantam on September 19, 2023

Emma Makepeace is a predictable spy novel heroine. She volunteers for dangerous assignments, expresses her displeasure when her bosses want her to play it safe, disregards their instructions when she feels she is the only one who can complete the mission, outfights thugs, and exposes the mole. The existence of a mole is one of the plot elements that makes The Traitor predictable, but nothing about the story is fresh.

Emma is in MI6. Despite her success in Alias Emma, she feels her gender is a barrier to the assignments she deserves. She begins the novel by trying to catch a Russian who is laundering money through a British bank. Emma is pulled off that project and tasked with figuring out why a low-level MI6 number cruncher was murdered. The investigation brings her to a Russian oligarch who is suspected of selling chemical weapons. She joins the staff of the oligarch’s yacht with the hope she will find evidence of those sales.

Emma follows the usual path of an undercover agent. She takes risks to search the oligarch’s yacht-office, dodges the suspicions of the oligarch’s security thug, and befriends (uses) the oligarch’s gorgeous, bored, drug-addled girlfriend. The oligarch eventually learns that Emma is a government agent. While MI6 blames that discovery on Emma’s tradecraft, Emma is convinced that someone sold her out to the oligarch. Hence, the obligatory mole.

Later in the novel, Emma befriends (uses) another oligarch’s girlfriend. This oligarch is the boss of the oligarch whose yacht she infiltrated. Emma thinks that surveilling him will let her discover the mole. Well of course it will, and of course Emma’s plan places her in grave danger.

Emma has almost no personality. Her complaints about not being taken seriously because of her gender are at odds with the important assignments she receives. She feels unappreciated because she has sacrificed any semblance of a personal life to serve king and country. Her last relationship fell apart because she couldn’t tell her boyfriend why she was always jetting off without notice. Although she bemoans her fate, Emma manages a spark of romance with another MI6 agent. This leads to cheesy sentences like “With Jon, though, everything felt possible” — sentences that would be at home in a romance novel.

Fortunately, the cheese is not overdone. Unfortunately, the plot — including the identity of the mole — is entirely predictable. Emma outfights large thugs with blows that are only vaguely described and occasionally stabs them with a tiny knife. The plot is mundane, the action is underdeveloped, and the compulsory mole subplot is so obvious that the reader will guess the mole’s identity well before the reveal. Had the mole been anyone else, I might have recommended the novel without reservations. I thought Ava Glass might at least try to surprise the reader, but she makes no effort at all.

While Glass has technical ability as a writer, she fails todeliver the suspense and credible action that spy novels require. The Traitor is at best a time-killer for spy fiction fans who are waiting for a better novel to give them their espionage fix.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

"Black Vault" by Alma Katsu

Published on Kindle by Amazon Original Stories on August 8, 2023

“Black Vault” is a timely spy story — a longish short story — drawn from recent congressional investigations into UFOs. The timeline alternates between 2006 and the present.

Craig Norton is a career officer in the CIA. In 2006, his career is going nowhere. Norton is arrogant and cocky but he doesn’t have the success or pedigree to back up his attitude. He’s running an unimportant asset in the Russia Division. When the asset is transferred to an assignment in Mongolia, Norton follows him. The relocation places Norton under the supervision of the China Division. The China Division harbors an institutional hatred of the Russia Division. Norton is not made to feel welcome.

Norton arranges to meet his asset at night in the middle of a field. The asset never appears, but Norton sees some strange lights in the distance moving at angles and speeds that defy physics. With some trepidation, he writes a report about what he saw because reporting anything unusual is part of his job. After all, maybe he saw an experimental Chinese aircraft.

Norton is cautioned against submitting the report by a CIA officer who reviews reports and tells agents not to say anything stupid. Norton disregards the advice. Head of Station soon complains that Norton has become a laughingstock and has tainted the rest of the office by writing a report about a UFO. Craig learns that Alvin Lee, chief of the China Division, was particularly critical of his report.

Norton’s career comes to an abrupt dead end. He’s eventually reassigned to the US, where he’s given pointless tasks to fill his time until he reaches retirement age. Norton made the mistake of bringing his wife to Mongolia. She left him as a prelude to divorce. He never really connected with his son. He used the classified nature of his work as an excuse to avoid meaningful conversations.

A few months before he’s able to retire, Norton is assigned to a new task force that was formed in response to a 60 Minutes story exposing the government’s suppression of information about UFO sightings. The task force is composed of other deadenders until Norton mentions to the Deputy Director of Operations that the task force will never accomplish anything without young agents who haven’t lost their curiosity. After suitable agents are assigned, Norton begins to learn why his initial report was buried.

Modern spy fiction tends to develop the theme of bureaucracy and professional infighting as impediments to accomplishment. As Norton digs into the aftermath of his 2006 report, he discovers that people who took his report seriously went to war with bureaucrats who thought UFOs were embarrassing. The notion that UFOs might exist, that their secrets might be investigated by Chinese rather than American scientists, was a potential career killer for anyone who scoffed at Norton in 2006. Now it’s looking like the suppression of inquiry should have been a career killer. The theme of government agents stepping all over each other to cover their mistakes by blaming others is always fun, if only because it always seems plausible.

Craig’s relationship with his son comes across as an afterthought, a way of forcing human interest into the story, but Norton benefits from careful characterization in other ways. He feels abused, overlooked, and underappreciated, to some extent with good cause.

The plot is tight, as a short story plot should be. Alma Katsu was wise to develop her concept in short form. The concept may be insufficiently substantial to carry a novel. The story eventually leads to a resolution that will be familiar to fans of spy fiction, at least after the UFOs are set aside. The mixture of fresh and familiar makes “Black Vault” an enjoyable read for fans of spy fiction and UFO conspiracies.

RECOMMENDED