White Fox by Owen Matthews

Published by Doubleday on March 7, 2023

Writers regularly turn out novels that offer a fictional explanation for Kennedy’s assassination. White Fox is the latest. It is the third in a series of books that feature Alexander Vasin as the central character. The novels follow an arc but each tells a self-contained story.

Vasin was a homicide investigator who became a KGB agent. Because he burned some bridges to uncover a spy in the last novel, General Orlov, his boss in the KGB’s Special Cases Department, placed Vasin in charge of a penal colony in the far North of Russia. The prison is very cold and the prisoners, particularly a gang of Serbs, are ruthless. Vasin knows that he is being punished. The punishment is unfair, but Vasin does not expect fairness in the Soviet Union.

Orlov sends Vasin a “special prisoner.” The prisoner is to be kept alive at all costs. The two men escorting him are to be eliminated. The prisoner’s file identifies him as Lazar Berezovsky, but that isn’t his real name. Berezovsky’s life is in danger because he knows about KGB involvement in the Kennedy assassination. Berezovsky has stashed a file with documents that identify the KGB officers who participated in the conspiracy. Orlov wants that file to gain power over his enemies, including a major in a different department of the KGB who wants Berezovsky to die so that his knowledge will be buried.

Vasin uses his wits rather than his fists to survive, but the story becomes an action novel after a riot sends Vasin fleeing from the prison, keeping Berezovsky and a couple of loyal prison guards at his side. Vasin wants to deliver Berezovsky to Brezhnev (the anticipated successor to Khrushchev) so the government will learn about the KGB’s world-changing shenanigans.

Vasin hopes to intercept a train carrying reinforcements to the prison, but the tracks are buried in deep snow and they must stay alive through unsheltered Arctic nights. They must also avoid the Serbian prisoners who are tracking them. Vasin does not know that two of the KGB major’s men are on the train with orders to kill Berezovsky.

Berezovksy, on the other hand, hopes to escape to a country where nobody wants to kill him. With KGB training, Berezovsky has skills that make it difficult for Vasin to hold him captive. The story involves multiple chases that unfold in realistic detail, sometimes with the help of Roma kids who are organized into a criminal gang.

White Fox creates waves of danger and suspense without relying on James Bond stunts or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s wrestling moves. Vasin is noteworthy because he’s a smart and principled character, albeit one who needs flexible principles to stay alive. His plans to find Berezovsky and his hidden documents are clever, but sometimes Berezovsky is more clever. The chess match that ensues makes White Fox more interesting than a typical tough guy thriller.

The ending is a surprise. I’m not sure whether it leaves room for another chapter in Vasin’s story, but I hope Owen Matthews writes another one.

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Red Traitor by Owen Matthews

Published by Doubleday on July 20, 2021

Notwithstanding its unfortunate title, Red Traitor is a smart, entertaining spy novel that is told from an unusual perspective. Although a few American characters appear, the protagonist and most of the key characters are Russian. The story primarily alternates between Moscow and a Russian submarine near Cuba. The events are loosely based on a Cold War incident in which Russian submarines were armed with nuclear torpedoes, and on a Russian (the traitor in the title) who provided clandestine information to the United States.

The novel takes place during the Kennedy Administration. Russia is establishing a military presence in Cuba and America is on the brink of war. The more important war that the story showcases is between two intelligence agencies in the USSR: the KGB and the GRU.

Alexander Vasin is a lieutenant colonel in the KGB and a favorite of his superior, Lieutenant General Yury Orlov. Vasin became a favorite by blaming a problem on an American spy. While the details of Vasin’s previous mission are described in Black Sun, it isn’t necessary to read Black Sun to understand Red Traitor.

Vasin invented the American spy, but Orlov doesn’t know that, or perhaps doesn’t care. Orlov’s mission is to undermine General Ivan Serov, head of the GRU and his chief rival for power. To that end, Orlov wants to prove that the spy works for Serov. Orlov has a candidate in mind — Oleg Morozov, a colonel in the GRU — but has only circumstantial proof that Morozov is a traitor. Orlov wants Vasin to find evidence that Morozov is a spy and isn’t overly concerned whether the evidence reflects reality.

Morozov has been behaving suspiciously, in part by collecting information from Sofia Guzman, a translator who has access to information about a secret project. The project involves the installation of long-range missile bases in Cuba. News of the project has made its way to American intelligence, making Morozov the likely source of the leak.

Vasin learns of a related project — the arming of submarines with nuclear torpedoes that are sailing to Cuba. Kennedy is creating a naval blockade around Cuba. A Russian lunatic, without the knowledge of Khrushchev, has ordered the submarine commander to launch the torpedo if the Russian subs are attacked while trying to run the blockade. Vasin knows that this will trigger a nuclear war and the likely destruction of Russia. He resolves to use his own initiative to stop the war, even if doing so might make him a traitor.

Part of the action takes place on one of the subs, where the fleet commander is at odds with a submarine captain who is eager to fire the first strike. Much of the novel’s tension comes from that underwater conflict, although Vasin’s tricky relationships with Orlov, Morozov, and Guzman add to the drama.

Like Black Sun, Red Traitor succeeds in part because the story is based on real events and in part because Vasin is a dark character who does not equate loyalty to his county to loyalty to autocrats who are willing to harm his country to achieve their personal ends. Owen Matthews keeps the various plot elements in constant motion, building suspense that is only partially tempered by the reader’s knowledge that nuclear war did not break out in 1962. Exactly how that war will be prevented, however, is something that the reader won’t know until late in the novel. The second Vasin novel is as strong as the first, making Matthews’ unusual look at espionage from a Russian perspective a good choice for fans of spy fiction.

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Black Sun by Owen Matthews

Published by Doubleday on July 23, 2019

Major Alexander Vasin is a former homicide investigator from the Moscow police who is now a KGB agent. In 1961, Vasin is sent to Arzamas-16, a city that does not officially exist, to investigate a physicist’s death. Fyodor Petrov was working on the development of a new bomb when he died from ingesting a radioactive substance. The local KGB pronounced the death a suicide. The Politburo is not convinced.

Vasin encounters obstacles as he investigates. Scientists proclaim themselves too busy to speak to him. The local KGB officer in charge insists that Vasin confirm the death as a suicide and go home. Yet there are secrets being kept and Vasin has been tasked by his boss in Moscow to uncover them. His mandate gives him power, but he suspects that he will be in danger if he pushes too far.

Vasin has a secret of his own, involving his boss’ wife. That secret seems destined to come out after Vasin's wife learns about his affair. If she doesn’t expose him directly, the fact that the KGB listens to every phone conversation in Russia may eventually be Vasin’s undoing.

The plot of Black Sun is built on intrigue, deception, and betrayal. The mystery — who killed Petrov and why? — is a good one. Owen Matthews sets up a range of suspects who might have a motive and places them against an overlapping backdrop of characters who have an incentive to send Vasin home with the crime unsolved. Any distraction from the goal of building and testing the ultimate weapon is unwelcome.

The retrospective look at the arms race is interesting not just for its potential impact on humanity, but because it immunized Soviet nuclear scientists from the constraints that governed the lives of most Soviet citizens. The scientists have access to “subversive” music and literature that are forbidden to most. The sense the scientists have of being a privileged and untouchable elite adds interest to Vasin’s investigation.  

Black Sun dramatizes the risks that politicians take with human lives when they order scientists to design and test nuclear weapons, risks that necessarily have unintended consequences, as the United States learned when it destroyed Bikini Atoll. The story, Matthews tells us in an afterword, is based on the reality of a bomb that Soviet scientists feared might set the world’s atmosphere on fire. A bomb with reduced power that the Soviets eventually tested shattered windows in countries 900 kilometers from the test site. The bomb’s inventor, Andrei Sakharov, lobbied the Soviet Union to enter into the first Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The characterization of Vasin as a man who believes himself to be a swamp dweller, undeserving of happiness, is suitable both to a noir novel and to the setting. The oppressive atmosphere of Soviet Russia pervades the story in chilling detail. Informers advance their careers by denouncing the innocent. Patriotism is measured by loyalty to people who hold power rather than loyalty to country. Survival depends on sacrificing principles. In a society where everything is relative, a world of lies where there is no room for moral purity, Vasin does his best to tell good lies that will make incremental improvements in the lives of those who are engulfed by Soviet darkness.

The story is tight and the resolution of the mystery is satisfying. Vasin finds a way to do justice (of a sort) without doing more harm than is necessary. Vasin has a bit in common with Arkady Renko and Bernie Gunther, two noir icons who pursue justice in unjust societies. If Vasin goes on to have a series of adventures behind the Iron Curtin — the next one is set up in the last chapter — the series will likely be one that Renko and Gunther fans will want to follow.

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