BOOK REVIEW: ‘Agents of Treachery’

AGENTS OF TREACHERY: NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED SPY FICTION FROM TODAY’S MOST EXCITING WRITERS
Edited with an introduction by Otto Penzler
Vintage, $15.95, 429 pages

Tense times shape reading tastes. During the Cold War years, it was not surprising to find a reading public drawn to books pitting resolute and cunning heroes against an array of villains only a totalitarian state could have produced. For writers like John le Carre, Robert Ludlum and Ian Fleming, a world on the brink of nuclear war populated by strutting oligarchs was good for business. When the Cold War ended, many wondered what the next generation of spy fiction and thriller writers would have to write about.

From the evidence provided by “Agents of Treachery,” an uncommonly well written and deftly assembled collection of stories by the genre’s master practitioners, the answer is: more than one might think.

The 21st century is no less in need of moral order than the last, and what better time than now to line up spooks and spies, jihadis and mercenaries in a manageable and revealing stew. That’s what fiction at its best is able to do, and that is precisely what “Agents of Treachery” does in spades. Some of the stories wrap up neatly, even soothingly. Others jolt and return in memory for days. A sampling:

James Grady, author of “Six Days of the Condor” (made into the film “Three Days of the Condor,” with Robert Redford) writes about an Arab FBI agent working undercover in Washington, D.C. Sami, the agent, observes of his youth in Beirut:

“PLO guys I idolized took custody of a sniper we captured, set him free. Started me thinking. Whose side is anybody really on? Then my father got a job at the Marine barracks. One of our factions blew it and him up. The Marines took care of my family. Put me in a Detroit high school. Soon as I could, I joined the Corps. Semper fi.

Joseph Finder, whose first novel, “The Moscow Club” was named one of the 10 greatest espionage novels of all time by Publishers Weekly, here offers a story about a Boston engineer obsessed by the doings of his Persian neighbors.

For Matt, the engineer, also an architecture nut, the world was a perilous place. “You’d be walking down the street, admiring the latest addition to the Boston skyline, and suddenly you’d be crushed beneath five hundred pounds of glass, a hail of jagged shards maiming other passersby. You’d never know what hit you. Funny how things like that could happen, things you’d never in a million years expect. A flying window of all things! No one was ever safe.”

John Weisman, who co-wrote “Rogue Warrior,” an insider’s account of Navy SEALS and is a frequent contributor to this newspaper’s Books pages, offers a hair-raising tale of CIA and Army Rangers in Iraq. Charlie, a retired Army Ranger, confronts an enemy in this way:

“Still, there were techno-advantages that Charlie, a veteran of Jurassic era warfare, had lacked in such antediluvian venues as Desert One, Grenada, Honduras, Panama, and Somalia. The Treo, for example. The Treo was linked to a secure satellite network. It gave Charlie the capability to look at real-time video. That’s how he knew that tonight’s target, Tariq Zubaydi, a local with probable ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and al Qaeda in Iraq, was at home and tucked into bed. He’d watched as Tariq’s guests left the house shortly after 2300 hours. Saw the lights go out just after midnight. Bingo.”

To the extent that one can sum up 14 stories from authors possessed of unique skill and vision it would be this. Danger is transnational. Life is rarely what it seems. Guns help.

Or, one might simply return to the witty and sure-footed introduction offered by Otto Penzler, the editor of this collection, who among other things is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He is the editor of “The Vampire Archives” and the best-selling “The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps.”

He writes, “It will come as little surprise to learn that for many years, one of every four novels in the United States fell into the espionage or international adventure category. … What may come as a surprise if not an outright shock, is that there never has been, until now, a collection of original stories devoted to this highly respected and challenging genre.”

Anticipating the exceptions that prove the rule, he avers that yes, Graham Greene, Eric Ambler and John Buchan wrote stories that were included in collections, but these collections were not strictly speaking adventure and espionage collections. Moreover, he notes that “the number of important authors in this very large genre who have never written even a single short story is legion. Ludlum never wrote one, nor did Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, Ken Follett, Alan Furst, Robert Littell, Daniel Silva, W.E.B. Griffin, Thomas Griffin or Trevanian.”

And the reason is, he writes, “Short stories set in the complex world of international espionage are hard to write.” Among other things, there is not time and space to write “plot within plots within plots.”

Nevertheless, the authors of the 12 stories here were given “an assignment that … was deceptively straightforward and simple: Write an international espionage or thriller story and set it anyplace in the world you like, in any era. No subject was forbidden, no word length specified, no political position denied, no philosophy advanced or hindered.”

And so, in addition to the authors previously acknowledged, readers will find tales from Dame Stella Rimington, who served for more than three decades in all three branches of the British Secret Service (MI5); Olen Steinhauer, Charles McCarry, John Lawton, Stephen Hunter, Gayle Lynds, Andrew Klavan, David Morrell, Robert Wilson and Dan Fesperman.

“One country’s traitor is another’s hero,” Mr. Penzler writes. Here in these stories, learn how a range of protagonists come to know the difference. These are raucous adventures for our time with lessons for all.

Carol Herman is books editor at The Washington Times.