The Old Enemy by Henry Porter

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on June 8, 2021

The Old Enemy continues and perhaps concludes the story that began in Firefly. While The Old Enemy is the third book in a series, a reader can enjoy it as a standalone thriller.

The novel begins with the murder of a retired and revered spy named Robert Harland. As death is approaching, Harland manages to leave a message for his wife that identifies his killer. Finding the code that explains the message is one of the many tasks that Harland’s old friend, Paul Samson, eventually undertakes.

Before he learns of Harland’s death, however, Samson is busy protecting Zoe Freemantle, who works for an organization called GreenState. Samson has been assigned that task by Macy Harp, the head of the private intelligence firm that is Samson’s employer. Samson doesn’t know why he’s protecting Freemantle, nor does Freemantle know that Samson has been hired to protect her. She might even think he’s stalking her. Samson only knows that Freemantle seems to have a connection to a building that has attracted the attention of government agencies in Great Britain and elsewhere. As Freemantle approaches that building, someone attacks Samson with a knife, but whether the attacker was targeting Samson or Freemantle is unclear.

As all of that unfolds, Denis Hisami is preparing to give testimony before Congress. Hisami is married to Anastasia Christakos. In an earlier novel, Samson rescued Anastasia from a kidnapping and now carries a torch for her. Hisami is about to reveal a major conspiracy that has reached high levels of government in the US and UK, but he’s poisoned before he reaches that point in his testimony.

Samson initially wonders whether Russians are getting even with all the people who played a role in recovering Anastasia from her kidnappers. The murder of Harland and the attempted murders of Hisami and Samson turn out to be part of a more complicated conspiracy. Samson pieces the conspiracy together with the help of his hacker friend Naji Touma, a resourceful young man Samson rescued in Firefly. Samson finds it difficult to pin down Naji to find out what he knows, a difficulty of intelligence gathering that bedevils Samson throughout the novel.

Despite the conspiracy’s complexity, the reader isn’t likely to get lost. Henry Porter provides internal summaries and other reminders of events that are critical to the plot, including important moments from the first two novels. The plot never becomes convoluted. Porter peppers the plot with action scenes without dumbing down the story. Like most fictional conspiracies, this one is driven by money and power. I’ll give Porter credit for crafting a credible conspiracy, or at least one that is more plausible than a typical Ludlum conspiracy.

I also give Porter credit for creating an interesting character in Paul Samson. He has the kind of tortured personality that makes a spy sympathetic. The plot takes Samson to various settings around the world while making clear that “the old enemy” — Russia — is still the one most likely to make serious trouble for western democracies. I don’t know if he intends to bring back Porter in future novels, but he is a worthy addition to the canon of fictional spies who make espionage fiction so enjoyable.

RECOMMENDED

Slough House by Mick Herron

Published by Soho Crime on February 9, 2021

Members of a group called the Yellow Vests are making noise about British pride, referring of course to white pride. While Slough House avoids direct mention of Brexit, Mick Herron alludes to it throughout the novel, painting its proponents as chumps and the politicians who endorse it as power hungry chump manipulators.

Peter Judd is one of the manipulators. He’s using Desmond Flint as his stalking horse. Until Judd takes ownership of him, Flint is part of an unruly mob who are trying to “own the libs.” Judd is manipulating Flint into a position of power, a position that Judd plans to control.

Judd believes he also controls Diana Taverner, who occupies the First Desk at the Secret Intelligence Service. Judd and a few other men of wealth bankrolled an off-the-books operation that Taverner directed without the knowledge of her superiors or the Prime Minister. Seeking revenge for a GRU murder of British agents, Taverner commissioned an assassination of her own on Russian soil. The private funding made it possible to do so without seeking permission that never would have been granted.

The GRU, of course, doesn’t appreciate Taverner’s retaliation, so it sends two assassins to England to perform a counterretaliation. To make that mission work, it needs to identify some agents. The GRU has acquired an archived list of agents from a wealthy young media owner named Damien Cantor, who believes that owning a news channel is “like putting a deposit down on a government.” The list is so old that some of the agents are no longer working. All of the agents happen to be assigned to Slough House, where the SIS sends spies who turn out to be useless when it doesn’t kill them instead.

The plot thus parallels current themes in British politics, from rising nationalism and Brexit to media influence and image as a substitute for substance. The plot begins with the murder of former Slough House agents. The killings coincide with a training exercise that irritates Jackson Lamb almost as much as the murders. Lamb is the curator of Slough House and perhaps the most unlikely spy master in the history of spy fiction. Lamb despises his agents (or at least that’s his claim) but he is solidly behind them, following the code of protecting his joes at all cost. When it becomes clear that his joes are being targeted, Jackson doesn’t let Taverner get in the way of doing what he believes should be done. The slow horses at Slough House might not be the best that Britain has to offer, but under Jackson’ guidance, they’re always good enough.

No other series in spy fiction infuses the intrigue of espionage with humor as effectively as the Slough House books. The supporting cast is quirky — Roderick Ho unrealistically regards himself as James Bond; Shirley Dander regularly gets drunk and sleeps around, River Cartwright never quite lives up to the standard set by his legendary grandfather — but they are endearing in their own ways. Rarely does a book go by in which a slow horse doesn’t die and it’s always a bit sad when that happens.

Much of the humor comes from Herron’s keen observation of the world: “When they went on about sixty being the new forty, they forgot to add that that made thirty-something the new twelve.” Herron alternates between dry wit and fart jokes, always achieving a perfect balance of humor and drama. His stories make clear that the world’s evil is not confined to places like Russia and China but is equally embodied in the lust for power that threatens all democracies. Every book in this series is a winner; Slough House is no exception.

RECOMMENDED

A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré

Published by Viking on September 5, 2017

John le Carré created the most extraordinary character in spy fiction when George Smiley appeared in Call for the Dead (1961). Smiley became a primary or secondary character in several other novels, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), the novel that put John le Carré on the map. In the Karla trilogy (1974 to 1979) — the best spy novels and among the finest literary novels I’ve ever read — Smiley unmasks a mole in British intelligence. Smiley was a moral man who used immoral means to do his job well and suffered for it. Younger than Smiley but often at his side was Peter Guillam, a key player who helped Smiley gather information that exposed the double agent and brought down Karla, the mole’s handler.

John le Carré died at the end of 2020, leaving behind a legacy of brilliant spy fiction (plus a mainstream novel that I quite enjoyed). His final novel, published in 2019, was a standalone. Two years before the release of that novel, he penned the aptly titled A Legacy of Spies, the last novel in the Smiley series. In many ways, it showcases his own legacy by reaching back to the events in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and explaining how events leading up to and following the tragedy of that novel — Alec Leamas and Liz Gold are shot at the Berlin Wall — were manipulated by Smiley and the man known only as Control.

At Smiley’s direction, Guillam has kept the true details of that incident out of the official record. Eventually the truth bites at his ankles, as Alec’s son, Cristoph, together with Liz’s daughter Karen, have sued the government, claiming that it is complicit in their parents’ deaths. Well, they’re right about that to some degree, although they don’t know all the details of Operation Windfall, conceived to smoke out the traitor in the upper ranks of the Secret Intelligence Service and to mislead Russia while protecting a vital source, an operation that had unfortunate consequences for Leamas and Gold.

Now the SIS needs to feed someone to the wolves to satisfy Parliament. Smiley is nowhere to be found. Official files have disappeared and, if they could be found, they would be covered with Guillam’s fingerprints. Guillam is politely interrogated before being locked in a library where he can read some of the secret files he hid (although not the ones he concealed off premises) as a prelude to answering more questions. Much of the novel is told in Guillam’s memory as he reads memoranda, some of which he wrote, and tries to assemble a coherent story about the past that doesn’t quite live up to the truth. As he does so, he fears that only Smiley can save him from his own indiscretions.

It put a smile on my face just to read the names of characters who have become iconic in spy fiction: Toby Esterhase, Bill Hayden, and the memorable Jim Prideaux, who makes a brief appearance near the novel’s end, quite unchanged since his featured role in The Honourable Schoolboy. And of course Smiley himself, still idealistic, still troubled by the moral choices that challenge his idealism. Looking back on his life, Smiley admits that he has never cared about preserving capitalism or Christendom. His duty was to England, not the England of Brexit but an England that was “leading Europe out of her darkness towards a new age of reason.” That England, he frets, may be moving away from reason and returning to darkness, as was much of the world when A Legacy of Spies was published.

Guillam is old as he tells this story. Unless John le Carré left a nearly finished manuscript lying about, it is his last appearance, a last glimpse of all the characters who did their best during the Cold War to lead England out of darkness. It offers the final pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is Smiley’s career and puts a frame around the completed picture. John le Carré did his fans a huge favor, and added to an unparalleled legacy of his own, with A Legacy of Spies.

RECOMMENDED

The Vigilant Spy by Jeffrey Layton

Published by Kensington on May 11, 2020

The Vigilant Spy is the fourth in a series of novels featuring Yuri Kirov, a Russian intelligence asset who defected and joined the western world of private enterprise. He gives the CIA an assist from time to time as the price of freedom. The Vigilant Spy fills in enough details of Yuri’s past that it can be read as a standalone.

The story begins with Uyghur dissidents who believe they are retrieving an underwater surveillance device. To their misfortune, they are are actually setting off a small nuclear device near a Chinese naval base. The operation doesn’t go exactly as planned, but the Russians who conceived it have made the Chinese blame the resulting EMT damage on the United States. The Russian operation is in retribution for China’s earlier antagonism toward Russia, in which China also attempted to deflect blame to the United States for its mischief.

Yuri Kirov was a Russian intelligence operative who is using his knowledge of submarines and underwater drones to win defense contracts for the Alaskan business he founded. The CIA and DOD decide his specialized knowledge will come in handy when it learns of a new Chinese weapon, an underwater drone that moves like a snake, wraps itself around targets, and explodes.

Kirov, a CIA agent, and some SEALs try to break into a Chinese military base to steal plans for the device, a Mission Impossible adventure that, to Jeffrey Lawton’s credit, the heroes must abandon in favor of a slightly more realistic objective. Before the novel ends, Kirov will engage in a daring escape from China with a hostage in tow, while the submarine that supports his mission plays tag with Chinese and Russian vessels in the South China sea.

Lawton writes action scenes that are brimming with tension and sets them up with the kind of groundwork that allows a reader to suspend disbelief. Lawton makes the relatively outlandish plot seems barely plausible, in part because the story never pushes past the outer boundary of credibility. The machinations of China, Russia, and the United States all have an aura of realism. The political intrigue adds a layer of interest to the fast-moving story.

Kirov is presented as a guy who would like to put politics behind him and move forward with his new western family. Characterization isn’t deep but it’s sufficient for an action novel. The fact that Kirov is a Russian spy-turned-defector makes him more interesting than the typical super-patriot thriller hero. The Vigilant Spy isn’t a top shelf spy novel, but it is an entertaining action-thriller.

RECOMMENDED

The Last Agent by Robert Dugoni

Published by Thomas & Mercer on September 22, 2020

The Last Agent follows The Eighth Sister as the second book to chronicle the exploits of Charles Jenkins, an unretired spy. Jenkins came out of retirement in the last novel because he needed the money. In this one, Jenkins returns to Russia to repay a favor.

Jenkins escaped from Russia in The Eighth Sister thanks to the sacrifice of Paulina Ponomayova. She provided a distraction that gave Jenkins time to get away from his pursuers. Jenkins assumed she died. It turns out that she is alive (at least for the moment) and in prison, where she will certainly be tortured on the premise that she knows the identities of spies who have passed information to the CIA for decades.

Naturally, the CIA decides that it would be smart to send Jenkins, a tall black guy who stands out in Russia, to rescue Paulina. Jenkins coerces a retired Russian spy, Viktor Federov, into providing an assist, playing both on Federov’s greed and on his competitive nature. After they confirm that Paulina is still alive, Jenkins concocts a plan to bust her out of prison and smuggle her out of Russia.

Farfetched? Of course it is, but improbability doesn’t get in the way of entertainment in a novel that is largely a setup followed by an extended chase scene. Much of the fun derives from the novel’s tradecraft, the various deceptions and ruses that the CIA employs to keep Jenkins and Paulina from being captured or killed. As for the chase, on roads and trains and boats and foot, Robert Dugoni delivers the excitement that a thriller should generate. The outcome is predictable and the story is bit light on drama, but the last half moves too quickly to allow time for contemplation of the novel’s faults.

The very last scene sets up a return to Russia to save the surviving spies whose identities Jenkins tried to protect in the first novel. Jenkins might want to stay unretired because he hasn’t felt this young in years, chases apparently serving as a tonic for youth until you get caught. I fear that Dugoni will go to the well once to often if he sends Jenkins back to Russia — by now, every cop in Russia must know that a tall black guy should be detained with no questions asked — but it isn’t fair to judge a novel I haven’t read. Maybe the formula will work a third time. I can attest that it worked well enough the second time to earn a recommendation.

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