A Colder War

By Charles CummingSt. Martin’s Press, 2014

The Ways of the Dead

By Neely TuckerViking, 2014Amelia Levene, “C,” the first female head of MI6—also known as SIS, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service—is back. So is ex-agent Thomas Kell, both introduced in Charles Cumming’s A Foreign Country (2012). In the sequel, A Colder War, Kell is still living in the no-man’s land of a disgraced spook. He’s been waiting almost two years to be cleared of charges as “Witness X” in a so-called torture scandal—an enquiry that is maddeningly dragging its heels. As it opens, a defecting Iranian asset is killed in a fiery explosion and the MI6 agent in charge, Paul Wallinger, head of station in Turkey, dies soon after in an “accident”. This brings a call to Kell from Amelia’s private number. Within twenty minutes, he is at her home in Chelsea.

He was about to ring the bell when he felt the loss of Wallinger like something falling apart inside of him and he had to take a moment to compose himself. They had joined SIS in the same intake. They had risen through the ranks together, fast-track brothers winning the pick of overseas postings across the post-Cold War constellation.…But Kell wasn’t here because of work…. He was here as her friend. Kell was one of the very few people within SIS who knew the truth about the relationship between Amelia Levene and Paul Wallinger. The pair had been lovers for many years, a stop-start, on-off affair which had begun in London in the late 1990s and continued, with both parties married, right up until Amelia’s selection as chief.

Now, ironically, Paul’s death has put him back in the game. Amelia sends him to Turkey to find out what really happened. What was Paul up to before his plane crashed? Kell gets red carpet access to all areas. Amelia’s word opens up all the relevant files.Of course, since we’re in the endless game of espionage, Amelia has a hidden agenda. 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, a.k.a. the Cousins, points to a mole or moles inside western intelligence whose very existence threatens every operation—and operative—in the Middle East. Wallinger himself may have been a traitor driven to suicide. As Amelia puts it:

“I’ve got to be completely honest with you. I cannot say, hand on heart, that Paul is above suspicion…. But we have to stop this thing. We have to find out where the leaks are coming from. I’ve had to shut almost everything down…. The Cousins don’t understand it and they’re getting restless. Everything we’re doing in Turkey, in Syria, with the Iranians, the Israelis, it’s all being affected. I can’t move until this thing is resolved. You’ve got to try to get answers quickly, Tom.”

She gives him four names. One, as it turns out, is absolutely pivotal. Cumming is topnotch when it comes to the high level cat and mouse of spy tradecraft, the tricks of pursuit from electronic wizardry to street level stalking. We watch with mounting apprehension as Kell and his team pursue their quarry. The action turns global with a few bombshells to ratchet up your blood pressure. There is a spectacular, heart-stopping, clandestine chase through Harrods. All the more harrowing because, as Kell points out, it’s considered the best counter-surveillance site in Western Europe. Shades of The Secret Pilgrim! And there are the little touches that Cumming does so well. Istanbul may be exotic but the spies convene at a local Starbucks.A Colder War’s intricate plot is matched with crackerjack dialogue. It’s a highly skillful portrait of the soul wrenching conflicts at play in what Le Carré calls, “Good men in bad countries who risked their lives for us.” In other words, it’s state-of-the-art espionage fiction.It may be a long way from the Middle East to the down and dirty neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. But there are certain tactics that thugs employ that are shared among gangs and guerillas. They are prevalent in Neely Tucker’s The Ways of the Dead.We’re in the waning days of the Clinton administration and the end of the 20th century is three months away. Sarah Reese, the white teenage daughter of a high-profile federal judge on the cusp of a Supreme Court appointment, is found murdered behind a convenience store in a very bad D.C. neighborhood. Three black teenage boys seen taunting her are fingered for it.Newspaper reporter Sully Carter is a one-time war correspondent with the physical and psychological scars to prove it:

The skin on his right knee looked like it had been put together by Dali during a hangover….the gait, the scars,… the distant manner—all combined to create a menacing air of someone who cared less about his future than the people around him cared about theirs.

He now works the crime beat on a major paper. He’s a functioning alcoholic, although his editors often question the “functioning” part. His favorite dive is Stoney’s near the courthouse, which has “an air that the smart set drank somewhere else.” He drinks Basil Hayden’s (on the rocks, water back). His mantra: “Anybody who can’t file drunk oughta turn in their fucking press card.”Sully’s newshound nose tells him there is a lot more to this case than meets his jaded eye. And the man who would know is Sly Hastings, the don, the warlord, the neighborhood drug baron. They share what might be called a negative past with Judge Reese. It is common knowledge: “Mr. Hastings offs people and gets away with it”The first thing Sly says to Sully:

“I hope you know more than what’s on TV brother, cause they don’t know shit.”….“This wasn’t a Sly Hastings operation?”“You really don’t want to come in somebody’s house and talk that kind of shit.”“So who should local law enforcement be looking for?”“I been thinking on that. I don’t know.”…“I’m saying this is one of those incidents where you and I can work together.”“I’ll ask around, keep you in the loop…I can use a story in the newspaper with the true facts in it, put a little heat on the feds to play straight. You, now, you’re going to let me know what you hear about them getting anywhere close to me.

Sly knew far more about the killing of Sarah Reese than he was saying. Sully knew that. He was the best intel on the street…. But there was no way to know who it helped or hurt, or how Sly would play it out.“Deal,” Sully said.Keeping Sly close, he is soon chasing a parallel story. A series of cold cases involving dead and missing young women from the same neighborhood. Three murdered women within a couple of blocks is a disturbing pattern. Sully thinks he may be on to a serial killer. The cops and his bosses don’t agree. Worse, they don’t care. These women were marginal which is why the cases went cold in the first place. Sully digs his heels in and runs his own investigation pissing off all of the powers that be. In the end, he doesn’t care because it pays off big time. Sarah Reese’s murder is just one piece of a large and ugly scandal involving a lot of very important people. Sully gets his story and a lot more than he bargained for. There is one of those double-twist endings that packs a punch you didn’t see coming.Tucker, a 25-year newspaper veteran who has spent most of his career at the Washington Post, gives us an insightful look at big-city journalism before the Internet. The hard-bitten, blighted city he evokes is Pelecanos territory, albeit with a view all his own. The dialogue is reminiscent of Elmore Leonard’s peerless inner city vernacular. But then the novel is dedicated to that Dickens of Detroit. I think he would have liked this probing, powerful, edgy debut novel.____Irma Heldman is a veteran publishing executive and book reviewer with a penchant for mysteries. One of her favorite gigs was her magazine column “On the Docket” under the pseudonym O. L. Bailey.