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 Silent Sisters by Robert Dugoni

Published by Thomas & Mercer on February 22, 2022

The Silent Sisters is the third novel to feature Charles Jenkins, a retired CIA agent who returned to the agency to carry out a mission in Russia. The novels are all premised on a traitor’s betrayal of seven women in Russia who have served as spies for America. The traitor made Russia aware of their existence but not of each woman’s identity. When Russia discovers their identities, the women die. Jenkins has been tasked with rescuing the survivors before Russia can identify them.

As a tall black man, Jenkins is far from inconspicuous when he enters Russia. Since he was exposed as a CIA agent in the first novel, his ability to pull off a rescue in the second novel strained credibility. In The Silent Sisters, the CIA has given Jenkins a disguise kit that lets him pass as a shorter white man, among other costume changes. That all seems a bit Mission: Impossible, but I willingly suspended by disbelief as the story moved forward. The Silent Sisters is easily the best of the three novels.

Jenkins’ mission is to rescue Maria Kulivoka, the last of the Seven Sisters who is still living in Russia. Maria works for a director of the FSB, Dmitry Sokalov, her unwitting source of classified information. Maria does sexual favors for Sokalov to stay in his good graces, including favors that disgust her. The favors combine with alcohol to make Sokalov forget that he’s revealing classified information. Maria is in a dangerous position not only because she is spying for America, but because Sokalov might be tempted to kill her to keep their affair from being known to his powerful father-in-law.

Early in the story, Jenkins goes into a Russian bar for a beer and a meal. He intervenes when a thug beats a prostitute. Events lead to the thug getting shot, although not by Jenkins. The thug turns out to be the son of a crime boss, making Jenkins marked for death by Putin (thanks to his successful missions in earlier novels) and by a criminal organization.

The shooting is investigated by Arkhip Mishkin, an honest and sympathetic character who is approaching retirement. Mishkin doesn’t want to leave a case unsolved before he retires. To that end, he also wants to find Jenkins, if only to ask him for his version of the thug’s killing.

Strong women had played a significant role in this series. Their strength is fueled by their will to survive. Spies who betray their countries risk daily exposure, so it isn’t surprising that Maria is tough. She achieves that toughness by bottling up the rage she feels toward Sokalov and her disgust with herself. As a crime boss who ascended to the throne when her father was murdered, Yekaterina Velikaya must also play a role to survive. Neither woman can allow her true personality to emerge, if one even exists at this point. Maria nevertheless softens a bit during a long train ride toward potential freedom, when she has long platonic chats with a man that show her a side of life she has been missing.

As always, the plot moves quickly and generates reasonable suspense. Jenkins is your basic aging spy who would rather be bonding with his kids than doing his patriotic duty in Russia. Maria and Mishkin and even Yakaterina are more complex characters. They give the story its heart, elevating The Silent Sisters above a standard action novel.

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BOX 88 by Charles Cumming

Published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Mysterious Press on January 11, 2022

Lachlan Kite works for an off-the-books organization created by intelligence agents from the US and the UK. The organization, known as BOX 88, hasn’t been authorized by either government. Few people know that it exists, although key CIA and MI6 agents divert their agency funds to BOX 88.

Kite was born and raised in Scotland, where his parents operated a hotel. When his father died, his mother sent him to Alford, a boarding school for the elite that Kite attended on a scholarship. Kite got into the requisite amount of boarding school trouble, usually in the company of his friend Xavier Bonnard, the son of an elite father. A “beak” (teacher) at Alford named Billy Peele spotted Kite’s potential for intelligence work and recruited him into BOX 88. Kite’s friendship with Xavier positioned him for a special assignment before he started college.

The story begins with Kite attending Xavier’s funeral. He meets a woman who has a flawed cover story. Kite correctly assumes that the woman is with MI5 and that she’s investigating BOX 88. Kite also meets an Iranian who claims to have been a friend of Xavier. Kite is inclined to believe the Iranian until he’s kidnapped and interrogated. The kidnapper questions Kite about his first mission. Kite weaves a story while denying that he was a spy when he visited the vacation home of Xavier’s family in France. As Kite answers or dodges questions, he recalls his childhood, recruitment, and efforts to gather intelligence on an Iranian guest of Xavier’s father, Luc Bonnard. He also recalls the passion he felt for Martha Raine.

Most spy novels are about betrayal. Kite feels that he is betraying his friendship with Xavier by taking advantage of the friendship to spy on Luc Bonnard’s Iranian friend. He feels that he is at least indirectly spying on Xavier’s family, a feeling that intensifies as Kite’s mission continues. In the present, Kite comes to feel that he has been betraying his wife by concealing the truth about his occupation, particularly after the kidnapper tries to gain leverage over Kite by threatening to kill his wife.

Charles Cumming balances action and characterization as the novel switches between Kite’s captivity in the present and his intelligence gathering as a teen. Both the scenes in Kite’s teen years and in the present build suspense. Aspects of the ending come as a surprise.

BOX 88 is apparently an origin story, the first in a series of books that will feature Kite and his clandestine organization. I hope that’s true. Cumming’s spy novels have generally been enjoyable if a bit uneven. BOX 88 is one of his best.

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The Contract by Gerald Seymour

First published in 1980

Gerald Seymour is one of the spy thriller genre’s best practitioners. The Contract is among his best efforts. The setup is crafted in meticulous detail. The action that follows builds relentless tension. The ending might be shocking to readers who are unfamiliar with Seymour’s tendency to avoid the sentimental or predictable.

A young man named Willi Guttman becomes sexually involved with a young English woman. The woman is in Geneva, working for the WHO. Willi lives in Moscow, but he meets the woman while working as an interpreter for the Soviet delegation to the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament. When the woman tells Willi that she is pregnant and needs his support, he agrees to defect so he can be with her.

After Willi fakes his death, the British SIS smuggles him out of Geneva and takes him to a safe house in England. They promise to reunite him with his girlfriend after he divulges all the secrets he knows. Unfortunately, he knows very little of value. His father, however, is Otto Gutttman, a prominent scientist who the Russians appropriated from Germany after the war. Otto now develops classified anti-tank technology for the Soviet Union. The British would love to get their hands on Otto. They see Willi as the means of inducing Otto’s defection.

The SIS learns from Willi that Otto takes an annual summer vacation in Magdeburg, his home town in East Germany. Henry Carter and his boss, Charles Mawby, devise a scheme to contact Otto in Magdeburg, alert him to Willi’s status as a defector, and convince him to join Willi in the west. To accomplish those goals, they hire a contractor. Johnny Donoghue is a former military intelligence officer who was separated from his employment in disgrace after mistaking a young girl in Northern Ireland for a terrorist and killing her. Johnny is fluent in German and, given his intelligence background, is seen as an ideal off-the-books operative.

The plan is to bring Otto and Willi’s sister to Berlin, where they will use forged identity papers and travel permits to enter West Germany, posing as West German citizens. In Seymour novels, plans hatched by SIS bureaucrats never go as planned. Johnny is eventually left with nothing but his wits and courage as he tries to bring Otto and Otto’s daughter out of East Germany. Fear of a bad outcome is palpable, heightened by the concern that Seymour nurtures for the welfare of the elderly Otto and his devoted daughter.

Excitement and dread build in equal measures as Seymour makes rapid shifts from scene to scene. He puts the reader into the heads of Johnny, Willi, bureaucrats on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and even the British Prime Minister, a man who isn’t happy to learn that the SIS, not for the first time, is keeping him in the dark about operations that could have a catastrophic impact on diplomacy if they go sideways.

Seymour’s attention to characterization and his intricate plotting place him on the top shelf of spy novelists. He doesn’t have the style of John Le Carré — few writers do — but his prose is crisp. The Contract is one of the best novels to explore the balance between the desire for freedom on the repressive side of the Iron Curtain and the desire to collect intelligence at any cost on the western side.

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Damascus Station by David McCloskey

Publsihed by ‎ W. W. Norton & Company on October 5, 2021

Damascus Station does what a spy thriller should do. It engages the imagination with tradecraft, appeals to the intellect with political intrigue, and excites the senses with action scenes. Some of the action takes place in the bedroom (or other convenient locations). More violent scenes play out in the streets and buildings of Damascus.

Much of the story takes place in Syria, where a brutal dictatorship is fighting a war against rebels. Samuel Joseph works for the CIA. His Levantine Arabic is flawless. He begins the novel in Damascus, where he has been sent to exfiltrate an asset, as well as Val Owens, the asset’s handler who is in Syria under diplomatic cover. The mission does not go well, particularly for Val.

A well-educated woman named Miriam, a Syrian general’s daughter, secretly opposes the government that employs her. Miriam’s cousin Razan makes no effort to hide her disdain for the Syrian president. She gets away with it because her father has a position in the government that allows him to shield her.

Sam is sent to Paris, where Miriam is attempting to coerce a brave Syrian woman into returning to Syria and renouncing her criticism of the Syrian regime. Miriam must threaten harm to the woman’s family to carry out her mission, threats that cause her to despise herself. Sam’s task is to recruit Miriam as a double agent for the CIA. The task is easy to accomplish, both because Miriam hates the ruling regime and because she feels an immediate sexual attraction to Sam. The rules prohibit Sam from acting on that attraction, but rules have never stopped fictional spies from hopping into bed with assets. Sam puts his career at risk and, as is the custom in novels of this nature, falls in love with Miriam.

Miriam is the kind of character a reader might love, as well. She’s intelligent, a fierce warrior, and willing to take risks to fight the leaders she serves. Sam is your prototypical spy, stalwart and loyal and an all-around good guy apart from his inability to keep it in his pants. My favorite character might be the tough chief of station in Damascus. She’s vulgar, lethal with a shotgun, and proclaims herself (with some justification) to be the Angel of Death.

The plot takes Sam to Damascus, where he follows Miriam as her handler, using the usual diplomatic cover for his spying. Spy novels are all about betrayal, and the time comes when Sam must question whether Miriam is playing him. That’s the kind of plot point that makes espionage novels so addictive.

Word gets the US that the Syrian president intends to use sarin gas to wipe out a city in rebellion. That’s a step too far for the US, as is the capture and beheading of an American. The US intends a targeted assassination in retribution for the murder and selective bombing to prevent the use of sarin. The story eventually brings the US and Syria to the brink (or slightly over the brink) of war. By the end, Sam and Miriam are both in peril. Quick thinking and sacrifice offers the only hope of averting disaster.

The story features the usual tradecraft — a good thing, because tradecraft establishes a spy novel’s identity — including dead drops and (perhaps too many) surveillance detection routes, all taught to Miriam in a frenzy. The theme of a spy breaking the rules by getting sexually involved with a source that he’s running is familiar, but it’s a credible theme that works well in the context of the story. The action scenes in the novel’s second half justify the novel’s categorization as a thriller. The balance between action, political intrigue, and relationship drama is just about perfect. And the ending, without being artificially happy, is at least hopeful.

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