Agent Running in the Field by John Le Carré

Published by Viking on October 22, 2019

No writer gives espionage a more human face than John Le Carré. His protagonists have regrets, but they make up for their mistakes with competence and an unfailing sense that doing the right thing is more important than doing what their bosses expect.

Nat is married to Prue. In their prime, they were both stationed in Russia, where they spied for the Secret Intelligence Service. Now Nat has an SIS desk job and Prue is a human rights lawyer. They live quietly in Battersea, have a daughter, and are generally happy. Events in this tight novel will test their contentment.

Nat is a badminton champ at Battersea’s Athleticus club. A young man named Ed Shannon has recently joined the club. He challenges Nat to a match because Nat is the best. They begin a sort of friendship, although Nat and Ed are both vague about their employment. Nat even brings a co-worker named Florence to a mixed doubles match, pretending that he doesn’t really know her. When Florence abruptly quits her job, the reader will suspect that the relationship between Nat and Ed and Florence will turn out to be bad for Nat’s career. That suspicion will be warranted, but the plot follows a surprising path.

Bryn Jordan, Nat’s former station chief in Moscow and currently “ruler-for-life of Russia department,” decides it is time to put Nat out to pasture. Nat doesn’t fit the new image of SIS, meaning he isn’t a young man with advanced computer skills. Rather than kicking Nat to the curb, Jordan sends him to London General. Its current head is Dominic Trench, who was station chief in Budapest when Nat was posted there. Dom is the kind of man “who takes you aside, anoints you his only friend in the world, regales you with the details of his private life you’d rather not hear, begs your advice, you give him none, he swears to follow it and next morning cuts you dead.”

Dom puts Nat in charge of the Haven, an all-but-defunct substation of London General, “a dumping ground for resettled defectors of nil value and fifth-rate informants on the skids.” Although it is a dead-end job, Nat endeavors to undermine Dom and Bryn by actually accomplishing something. He begins with a sleeper agent, a defector who is suddenly called to service by his Russian masters.

That story unfolds in the entertaining style a reader would expect of Le Carré, but it takes off when it circles back to Nat’s relationship with Ed. Naturally, Ed falls under suspicion and naturally, given the suspicious minds at work in SIS, Nat is regarded as a potentially culpable partner in crime. And naturally, everyone at SIS has it wrong, but it will take some quick thinking and astute tradecraft for Nat resolve the problem as best he can.

Nat, Prue, Ed, and Florence are in the vein of Le Carré’s most likeable characters. The “enemy” is kept backstage — for a time, it isn’t even clear which country is using its intelligence efforts against Britain — but Nat’s real enemies, as is often the case in a Le Carré novel, are the bureaucrats and politicians who have risen to the level of their incompetence. Brexit lurks in the background, as does Donald Trump, both mucking up the ability of Britain and America to work together to achieve common goals.

Even if his best work is behind him — and his best is the best — Le Carré remains the reigning champion of the espionage novel. He is still an astute observer of the human capacity for deception as well as the human fallibility that allows deceivers to triumph. He wrote this novel at the age of 88, but he has not forgotten, and refuses to condemn, the virtues of youthful idealism. Agent Running in the Field suggests that aging people can use their own brand of idealism to thwart, in some small way, a system that rewards duplicity and that confuses patriotism with blind obedience to rules that serve leaders, not the country.

RECOMMENDED

[Note: If you believe the reviewers (and I use the term loosely) who gave this novel one star on Amazon because it does not glorify Trump, you might conclude that the book is an anti-Trump diatribe. In fact, Trump barely rates a mention, although CIA machinations do play a role in concert with Brexit. The book is a best seller because it deserves to be, regardless of the mindless attacks launched by the right wing extremists who feel duty bound to attack anything they perceive as being even vaguely liberal.]

The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer

First published in 2010; reissued by Minotaur Books on February 4, 2020

The Nearest Exit is the second novel in Olen Steinhauer’s Milo Weaver trilogy. The trilogy was recently reissued because a fourth novel will soon be added to the series.

As we learned in The Tourist, Milo does nasty work for a branch of the CIA that few people know exist. Together with the Tourist Agents who research and support their missions, Tourists travel around the world imposing America’s will on foreign entities, usually by killing people the Tourist masterminds have come to dislike.

Milo didn’t seem to have or want much of a future as a Tourist by the time the first novel ended. He wanted to devote himself to his wife and daughter, not to the whims of his agency. When the new boss wants Milo to return, Milo finds he has little choice. Milo begins with some baby assignments but is eventually charged with killing a 15-year-old girl named Adriana Stanescu. Milo wonders if he is being asked to kill a child to prove his loyalty, but having a daughter of his own, he finds a way to circumvent the mission without jeopardizing his career. To achieve that goal, he enlists the help of his father, who is running a little spy operation of his own for the UN, unbeknownst to pretty much everyone except Milo.

Adriana’s eventual fate pits Milo against his boss, his father, and a highly placed German law enforcement agent named Erika Schwartz. Erika is morbidly obese and a serious alcoholic, although she reserves her heaviest drinking for the end of the workday. She’s also astonishingly good at her job, making her the most intriguing supporting character in the book.

Erika has a video of Milo kidnapping Adriana, which turns her into one of Milo’s many adversaries. Adriana’s father is another. But the most formidable of the group is a Chinese spymaster who may or may not have planted a mole among the Tourists — or perhaps among the few Senate aides who are cleared to know about the Tourist program.

The plot combines traditional themes of betrayal with a clever Chinese scheme that has Milo more than once changing his mind about the existence of a mole. By the time the action winds down, things are not looking good for the Tourists. Milo’s future seems particularly bleak, as does his marriage, which has not benefitted from his employer-imposed secretiveness or from his absences from the family as he charges off to make the world safer. Even the CIA-approved marriage counselor has some doubts about Milo’s ability to focus on his family.

Unlike the first novel, the story ends on something of a cliffhanger. That’s not unexpected in a trilogy and, having read the first two, I can’t imagine that any spy fiction fan would forego the pleasure of reading the third installment. The combination of strong plotting, international intrigue, and sharp characterizations enshrine Steinhauer in the top echelon of American spy novelists.

RECOMMENDED

The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer

First published in 2010; reissued by Minotaur Books on November 7, 2019

The Tourist was first published in 2010. I try to read as many reputably published spy novels as I can find, but 2010 was a bad year in my reading life. Several years later, I read and enjoyed a more recent novel by Olen Steinhauer, but I didn’t make it back to the trilogy that began with The Tourist. Fortunately, Minotaur is reissuing trade paperback editions of the Tourist novels and has made them available for review, presumably to promote the publication of a fourth Tourist novel next year. I am grateful for the opportunity to catch up on some spy novels that I didn’t know I’d missed.

Charles Alexander is an American spy. More specifically, he is a Tourist, a CIA agent who travels abroad and makes deadly mischief (as opposed to the Travel Agents who stay in America to facilitate the Tourists). His real name is not Charles Alexander, but he’s used that name for two years.

Taking a break from pondering suicide, Charles goes to Slovenia in search of a station chief who disappeared with a pile of money. The chief was supposed to give the pile to an informant in exchange for the location of a Bosnian war criminal whose capture would put a feather in the American cap. Charles’ contact, who works for the chief, is Angela Yates. Charles quickly finds evidence suggesting that the station chief, despite his long and loyal service, is both a thief and a murderer. After tracking the station chief to Venice, events take a wrong and violent turn, convincing Charles it is time to change his life.

Six years later, Charles is Milo Weaver, a man with a wife and daughter. He has promised to stay home as much as he can. Milo has been tracking an assassin known as The Tiger, who crossed his path in Venice. An encounter with The Tiger takes a strange turn that causes Milo to be suspected of a crime.

Soon after that meeting, Milo travels to Paris to set up Angela Yates, who might or might not be passing secrets to the Chinese. The plot threads involving Yates, the Chinese, the Tiger, and the Tiger’s client quickly entangle. After some nicely written action scenes, Milo finds discovers that lies he told about his past are disrupting his career and marriage. If help is to arrive, it will come from an unexpected source. By the end of the novel, Milo is something of a mess.

Despite being the opening novel of a trilogy, the story is self-contained. The Tourist combines thoughtful character development with a credible, intriguing plot. The novel moves briskly, not because it is action-filled (although it has some adrenalin-boosting scenes), but because the story and characters are so interesting that the reader is motivated to learn what happens next. In fact, The Tourist motivated me to move on to the second novel of the trilogy, which I will do with pleasure.

RECOMMENDED

A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré

Published in the UK and by Scribner in the US in 2008

There is no more observant student of human nature than John le Carré. He explores the spaces between what people say and what they leave unsaid. He examines motivations, which are so often failings: an aging man’s irrational devotion to a young woman; an aging woman’s loyalty to a bond that never existed; bureaucracies at war with each other and bureaucrats at war with their souls. His protagonists are keenly aware of their shortcomings and often think of how their lives could have, or should have, turned out differently. So it is with Tommy Brue.

Brue is a private banker in Hamburg, having inherited and then moved the bank he inherited from his father. Brue also inherited some questionable accounts that his father created to hold wealth smuggled from the collapsing Soviet Union.

A lovely and lively young lawyer for a charitable organization gives Brue an account number that was given to her by Issa, who got it from his father, who got it from Brue’s father. Issa is from Chechnya and has spent time in a Turkish prison. He managed a harrowing journey to Hamburg despite being wanted by law enforcement agencies in several countries.

To determine whether Issa is entitled to funds that Brue would prefer his father had never accepted, Brue must delve into Issa’s identity and history. John le Carré develops not just Issa’s story, but the story of Chechnya — the home of Issa’s mother, who was raped at fifteen by Issa’s Russian father. Issa looks to Brue for protection rather than money, but Brue is not in the protection business. Brue is in the uncomfortable position of addressing moral questions rather than banking questions. If (unlike his father) Brue insists that legal formalities be followed, Issa will likely be deported and then will certainly be tortured, by Turks or Russians or others.

Brue is typical of John le Carré protagonists, particularly in his later work. Brue suspects his wife is cheating on him but doesn’t want to know. He runs from difficulties, preferring avoidance to confrontation. His social behavior is proper but he is incapable of expressing true feelings. He behaves prudently during an uneventful life until the time comes to choose between cautious behavior and meaningful but dangerous action. When he makes the choice, he isn’t entirely sure why. He is energized by a young woman who ignites, if not lust exactly, an opportunity for self-examination.

Issa’s lawyer, Annabel Richter, is also typical of le Carré in that her character is complex and conflicted. She views Issa as “her tutor in unbearable pain and hope.” She has learned from failure — hers as a lawyer, or the legal system’s — that a time would come when she would break all the rules for a client. Issa is that client.

The other key character, apart from Issa, is Gunther Bachman, a German intelligence officer stationed in Hamburg as punishment for his sins. One of his people sees that Sweden has identified Issa as an escaped prisoner from Turkey who gave the slip to Swedish authorities. Bachman works out that Issa may be coming to Hamburg. He then finds himself in a bureaucratic nightmare as British intelligence, the CIA, and his German superiors engage in a turf war.

Issa is far from a terrorist. He wants nothing to do with violence or his father’s wealth, which he regards as ill-gotten and thus in violation of Islamic law. He wants only to pursue a career in medicine. The plot focuses on how the fighters in the war on terror are at war with humanity in their willingness to sacrifice the innocent, all to make doubtful gains in their efforts to thwart terror. Some readers might see the novel as cynical; I viewed it as honest. As always, John le Carré tells a good story and creates characters who stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.

RECOMMENDED

The Eighth Sister by Robert Dugoni

Published by Thomas & Mercer April 9, 2019

The Eighth Sister starts as a spy novel and turns into a lawyer novel. Two of my favorite genres rolled into a single book. I’m happy to report that the result will appeal to fans of both espionage thrillers and courtroom thrillers.

Seven Russian women, known as the Seven Sisters, were trained as American agents during the Cold War. Now that Putin is in charge, three have been killed. Former CIA agent Charles Jenkins, who runs a security service with cash flow problems, is recruited to travel to Moscow and identify the eighth sister, a Russian operative who is trying to ferret out the identities of the remaining four. Once Jenkins identifies her, someone else will kill her.

Jenkins is recruited by the man who used to be his station chief in Mexico City. For that reason, Jenkins believes that the CIA has authorized his mission. I suspect that most fans of spy fiction will wonder from the start whether that is true, and will wonder why Jenkins doesn’t do more to confirm that he is actually serving his government. But he’s getting paid handsomely, so maybe he doesn’t care.

Jenkins has a 9-year-old son at home and another baby on the way. He is 64 years old, 6’5” and black, so he stands out a bit in Moscow. The plot includes some good chase scenes in Russia when the mission goes south. It also introduces collateral characters who are self-sacrificing, adding a feel-good element to the story that never seems manipulative.

Every good spy novel contains at least one double-cross while challenging the reader to guess whether certain characters are good guys or bad guys. After the double-cross occurs, Jenkins is accused of being a traitor, a charge that never sits well with jurors or hanging judges.

The story offers a realistic view of the lengths to which the federal government will go to poison the public’s mind when it makes arrests, doing everything it can — from perp walks to press releases — to make a suspect guilty in the public mind until proven innocent. And convincing witnesses to tell the government’s version of the truth, even if it isn’t objectively true, is a specialty of federal prosecutors.

Jenkins is defended by David Sloane, a seasoned lawyer who has appeared in other Robert Dugoni novels. The plot depends on the government bringing Jenkins to trial while withholding evidence of his innocence — something no ethical prosecutor would do, but not every federal prosecutor is ethical. In our imperfect world, however, prosecutors (and particularly federal prosecutors) know their odds of being disciplined for ethical lapses are virtually nonexistent. I also found it doubtful that a majority of the Ninth Circuit would go along with a charade that prevents a defendant from presenting compelling evidence of innocence (some other circuits, yes, but the Constitution is still in effect on the West Coast). Still, it is easy to roll with the court’s ruling to keep the story moving.

The courtroom scenes generate the kind of drama that legal thrillers should create. The Eighth Sister effectively bridges the spy and legal genres, telling two very different stories but telling them both well. I don’t recall another novel that combines the genres in quite this way, so bravo to Dugoni for doing something new and clever — and for doing it so ably.

RECOMMENDED