A colder war

Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Over several novels, Cumming has established himself, along with Olen Steinhauer, as one of the best of today's old-school espionage novelists. His latest, a follow-up to A Foreign Country (2012), finds disgraced agent Tom Kell still out in the cold after being scapegoated in the wake of a torture scandal. That changes quickly when his former colleague, Amanda Levene, now head of MI6, drafts Kell to find out whether the airplane crash that killed her lover, Paul Wallinger, head of station in Turkey, was an accident or the work of a suspected mole. Or moles Wallinger himself may have been a traitor driven to suicide. We're in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy territory here, of course, but there are also hints of later le Carre, as Kell falls in love with Rachel Wallinger, Paul's daughter, and quickly finds himself in that treacherous demilitarized zone between the personal and the political. Cumming is a master at describing the details of spy tradecraft, from electronic wizardry to tailing a suspect on the street, and one of the great pleasures of this novel is watching Kell and his team do their work. But is the price of doing that work and living the clandestine life it requires too high? Are ideals as deadly as bombs? Those are the fundamental questions of the spy novel, and Cumming asks them with great eloquence, revealing a contemporary twist or two in the way his characters frame their uncertain answers, but coming round in the end to the abiding melancholy that still shrouds all but the most heartless of spies. Superb espionage fiction in the grand tradition.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Cumming's intricate sequel to 2012's A Foreign Country finds British operative Thomas Kell, who's been indefinitely suspended from the SIS, reevaluating his life between pints of pale ale at a London pub. But when the call comes from "C"- SIS's first female chief, Amelia Levene-Kell is back in the game, tasked with unraveling the mystery surrounding the suspicious death of Paul Wallinger, an SIS agent stationed in Turkey who happened to be C's former lover. The death, coupled with the murders of a growing number of "assets" throughout the region and the failure of numerous joint operations between SIS and the CIA, point to a mole inside western intelligence whose existence threatens every SIS operation-and operative-in the Middle East. It's hard not to root for a character like Kell-deeply cynical but still very much an idealist-and the bombshell plot twists toward the novel's conclusion will have spy fiction aficionados eagerly awaiting the next installment. Agent: Luke Janklow, Janklow & Nesbit. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

Here's another in New York Times best-selling Cumming's edgily elegant works, perfect for those wanting a contemporary spy thriller in the vein of le Carre and even for those who don't. In the second Thomas Kell book, three recent recruits by Western intelligence-a military official and a nuclear scientist from Iran, plus a journalist critical of Turkey's government-all meet unfortunate fates. Then MI6's veteran agent in Turkey perishes in a mysterious plane crash, and disgraced agent Tom Kell is pulled back in the fold to dig out the mole evidently buried somewhere. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

An intriguing novel of espionage and deceit set primarily in current-day Turkey.Spying is waiting, observes one of two spies waiting for the Iranian exfiltration code-named HITCHCOCK. Their wait ends when they witness a Mercedes explode with the Iranian inside. Soon, the spy named Paul Wallinger is killed when his Cessna crashes. Evidence suggests he committed suicide, but could it have been murder? In London, disgraced SIS agent Tom Kell comes in from the cold to try to learn the truth about the mysterious deaths. Do the Brits have a mole in their midst? Do the Americans at Langley care a whit about the life of a British agent? Kell ponders these questions over many cigaretteslots of smoking goes on in this story. Wallingers daughter, Rachel, also wants to know the truth about the accident, and she places herself in harms way to find out. The Russians, the Americans, the Iranians and the Brits all have a stake in this game between spies drama. Everything to Kell becomes "a clue, a tell, a signalor a blind alley." The plotting is solid if unexceptionalthe twists and turns are unlikely to shockand the characters are developed just deeply enough to do the job. On the other hand, the details are nicely done; for example the vivid descriptions of the Bosporus: "Kell went outside into the humid afternoon...smoking a cigarette as a rainbow arced across his shoulder towards the distant minarets of Aya Sofia." Obviously this is Cold War fare, but what the "colder war" of the title is colder than is unclear. Colder than the McCarthy era? Colder than the Cuban missile crisis? Nah.Not a bad story, but it probably wont leave readers breathless. Spy-vs.-spy fans might give it a try. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---

1 The American stepped away from the open window, passed Wallinger the binoculars, and said: "I'm going for cigarettes." "Take your time," Wallinger replied. It was just before six o'clock on a quiet, dusty evening in March, no more than an hour until nightfall. Wallinger trained the binoculars on the mountains and brought the abandoned palace at Ishak Pasa into focus. Squeezing the glasses together with a tiny adjustment of his hands, he found the mountain road and traced it west to the outskirts of Dogubayazit. The road was deserted. The last of the tourist taxis had returned to town. There were no tanks patrolling the plain, no dolmus bearing passengers back from the mountains. Wallinger heard the door clunk shut behind him and looked back into the room. Landau had left his sunglasses on the farthest of the three beds. Wallinger crossed to the chest of drawers and checked the screen on his BlackBerry. Still no word from Istanbul; still no word from London. Where the hell was HITCHCOCK? The Mercedes was supposed to have crossed into Turkey no later than two o'clock; the three of them should have been in Van by now. Wallinger went back to the window and squinted over the telegraph poles, the pylons, and the crumbling apartment blocks of Dogubayazit. High above the mountains, an airplane was moving west to east in a cloudless sky, a silent white star skimming toward Iran. Wallinger checked his watch. Five minutes past six. Landau had pushed the wooden table and the chair in front of the window; the last of his cigarettes was snuffed out in a scarred Efes Pilsen ashtray now bulging with yellowed filters. Wallinger tipped the contents out of the window and hoped that Landau would bring back some food. He was hungry and tired of waiting. The BlackBerry rumbled on top of the chest of drawers; Wallinger's only means of contact with the outside world. He read the message. VERTIGO IS ON AT 1750. GET THREE TICKETS. It was the news he had been waiting for. HITCHCOCK and the courier had made it through the border at Gurbulak, on the Turkish side, at ten to six. If everything went according to plan, within half an hour Wallinger would have sight of the vehicle on the mountain road. From the chest of drawers he pulled out the British passport, sent by diplomatic bag to Ankara a week earlier. It would get HITCHCOCK through the military checkpoints on the road to Van; it would get him onto a plane to Ankara. Wallinger sat on the middle of the three beds. The mattress was so soft it felt as though the frame was giving way beneath him. He had to steady himself by sitting farther back on the bed and was taken suddenly by a memory of Cecilia, his mind carried forward to the prospect of a few precious days in her company. He planned to fly the Cessna to Greece on Wednesday, to attend the Directorate meeting in Athens, then over to Chios in time to meet Cecilia for supper on Thursday evening. The tickle of a key in the door. Landau came back into the room with two packets of Prestige filters and a plate of pide . "Got us something to eat," he said. "Anything new?" The pide was giving off a tart smell of warm curdled cheese. Wallinger took the chipped white plate and rested it on the bed. "They made it through Gurbulak just before six." "No trouble?" It didn't sound as though Landau cared much about the answer. Wallinger took a bite of the soft, warm dough. "Love this stuff," the American said, doing the same. "Kinda like a boat of pizza, you know?" "Yes," said Wallinger. He didn't like Landau. He didn't trust the operation. He no longer trusted the Cousins. He wondered if Amelia had been at the other end of the text, worrying about Shakhouri. The perils of a joint operation. Wallinger was a purist and, when it came to interagency cooperation, wished that they could all just keep themselves to themselves. "How long do you think we'll have to wait?" Landau said. He was chewing noisily. "As long as it takes." The American sniffed, broke the seal on one of the packets of cigarettes. There was a beat of silence between them. "You think they'll stick to the plan or come down on the one hundred?" "Who knows?" Wallinger stood at the window again, sighted the mountain through the binoculars. Nothing. Just a tank crawling across the plain: making a statement to the PKK, making a statement to Iran. Wallinger had the Mercedes license plate committed to memory. Shakhouri had a wife, a daughter, a mother sitting in an SIS-funded flat in Cricklewood. They had been waiting for days. They would want to know that their man was safe. As soon as Wallinger saw the vehicle, he would message London with the news. "It's like clicking refresh over and over." Wallinger turned and frowned. He hadn't understood Landau's meaning. The American saw his confusion and grinned through his thick brown beard. "You know, all this waiting around. Like on a computer. When you're waiting for news, for updates. You click refresh on the browser?" "Ah, right." Of all people, at that moment Paul Wallinger thought of Tom Kell's cherished maxim: "Spying is waiting." He turned back to the window. Perhaps HITCHCOCK was already in Dogubayazit. The D100 was thick with trucks and cars at all times of the day and night. Maybe they'd ignored the plan to use the mountain road and come on that. There was still a dusting of snow on the peaks; there had been a landslide only two weeks earlier. American satellites had shown that the pass through Besler was clear, but Wallinger had come to doubt everything they told him. He had even come to doubt the messages from London. How could Amelia know, with any certainty, who was in the car? How could she trust that HITCHCOCK had even made it out of Tehran? The exfil was being run by the Cousins. "Smoke?" Landau said. "No, thanks." "Your people say anything else?" "Nothing." The American reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. He appeared to read a message, but kept the contents to himself. Dishonor among spies. HITCHCOCK was an SIS Joe, but the courier, the exfil, the plan to pick Shakhouri up in Dogubayazit and fly him out of Van, that was all Langley. Wallinger would happily have run the risk of putting him on a plane from Imam Khomeini to Paris and lived with the consequences. He heard the snap of the American's lighter and caught a backdraft of tobacco smoke, then turned to the mountains once again. The tank had now parked at the side of the mountain road, shuffling from side to side, doing the Tiananmen twist. The gun turret swiveled northeast so that the barrel was pointing in the direction of Mount Ararat. Right on cue, Landau said: "Maybe they found Noah's Ark up there," but Wallinger wasn't in the mood for jokes. Clicking refresh on a browser. Then, at last, he saw it. A tiny bottle-green dot, barely visible against the parched brown landscape, moving toward the tank. The vehicle was so small it was hard to follow through the lens of the binoculars. Wallinger blinked, cleared his vision, looked again. "They're here." Landau came to the window. "Where?" Wallinger passed him the binoculars. "You see the tank?" "Yup." "Follow the road up...." "... Okay. Yeah. I see them." Landau put down the binoculars and reached for the video camera. He flipped off the lens cap and began filming the Mercedes through the window. Within a minute, the vehicle was close enough to be picked out with the naked eye. Wallinger could see the car speeding along the plain, heading toward the tank. There was half a kilometer between them. Three hundred meters. Two. Wallinger saw that the tank barrel was still pointing away from the road, up toward Ararat. What happened next could not be explained. As the Mercedes drove past the tank, there appeared to be an explosion in the rear of the vehicle that lifted up the back axle and propelled the car forward in a skid with no sound. The Mercedes quickly became wreathed in black smoke and then rolled violently from the road as flames burst from the engine. There was a second explosion, then a larger ball of flame. Landau swore very quietly. Wallinger stared in disbelief. "What the hell happened?" the American said, lowering the camera. Wallinger turned from the window. "You tell me," he replied. Copyright © 2014 by Charles Cumming Excerpted from A Colder War by Charles Cumming All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---