Book review - The Spycatcher

The Spycatcher (2011) is a debut espionage novel by Matthew Dunn, who just happens to have been trained by British SIS, as well as working with units of the SAS, SBS, and MI5, GCHQ and CIA operatives. The credentials are backed up by prose that reeks of insider knowledge.

The book was originally published with the title Spartan in hardback and then retitled for the paperback. The hero, Will Cochrane, is known by the code name Spartan. The British Spartan Programme allows only one man to go through the process, and he will be answerable only to the Prime Minister and his controller, Alistair: Spartan is trained to be a lethal weapon.

It begins with high tension, in New York’s Central Park, where an assignation turns into an assassination. Cochrane is badly wounded but survives (he would, wouldn’t he?) Part of the mystery that is his life unfolds as he is introduced to a secretive American who just happens to know Cochrane’s controller. The debacle in Central Park involved several agents from Iran. Alistair has learned that the Iranians are planning a massive atrocity in either the UK or the USA. Cochrane’s task is to identify the mastermind, capture him and get him to reveal the intended target. Nothing to it, really. Except, as Alistair says, ‘There is nothing regular about this mission.’ Cochrane is sent to meet a MI6 contact in Sarajevo, who knows somebody who might have a lead on the so-called mastermind.

No sooner does he get there than it all goes wrong.

But Cochrane has one lead – Lana, a woman living in Paris, who might have known the ‘mastermind’ during the Bosnian conflict. She was a journalist at the time, and came away scarred both physically and mentally. Reluctantly, he enlists her aid in locating her ex-lover, a man she now hates.

He is aided by a team of four specialists recruited specially for this mission. They’re tough and soon prove their loyalty to Cochrane. The trail will lead from the freezing streets of Sarajevo to the snow-clad mountain region of New York State and the city itself for the violent denouement.

Throughout, we follow the spy’s tradecraft, trailing suspects, killing shadowy agents. These passages are well written, sucking you into the suspenseful story, all the time casting doubt on the ability of innocents to survive. The insider knowledge is evident but never obtrusive. We believe in the apparent invincibility of Spartan. But he makes mistakes; inevitably. Dunn has created a hero readers will willingly follow in subsequent books. Cochrane is flawed, troubled by his past, aching to give it all up and lead a ‘normal’ life, and yet he is a driven soul, wanting to right wrongs, needing to punish those who do evil things. He is not averse to being judge, jury and executioner.

The narrative compels the reader to keep turning the pages. That is what every thriller should do; many don’t manage it.

Dunn has now produced seven books in the Spycatcher series. Be aware that he has also published two novellas and check the review comments of these.

Editorial comment.

Despite the page-turning ability of the writer, there are certain aspects that should have been addressed by his editors.  Almost on every page, somebody’s eyes ‘narrowed’; it became tedious. As for Cochrane’s training, stoic in adversity, it seemed out of character for him to kick the ground (or something else), or stamp his feet ‘in frustration’ so often.

The twist was not a surprise and, in a similar vein to Dan Brown, the explanations seemed contrived. Yet, and yet, the sheer verve of the narrative and the strength of the character Spartan carry you through these minor misgivings. That’s not great literature, but it is good story-telling.

As for the book title change, that seems significant and worthy of note by budding authors. Spartan was fine, since this was the main character’s codename. However, it smacked of a historical novel, not a contemporary espionage thriller. So, I can understand the change. It became The Spycatcher with the strapline ‘It takes a spy to catch a spy’.  However, subsequently it soon became simply Spycatcher and then the next books were referred to as Spycatcher novels. And if you examine some of the titles, some have been subtitled ‘A Will Cochrane novel’.  Received wisdom is to create a brand. And yet there’s a lack of consistency here; if Harper Collins (and its imprints) can’t manage that, what chance have lesser mortals, I wonder…. 

Saturday Story - 'Always the Innocent'

Since WWII, in excess of 20 million people have died in wars and lesser conflicts. Today there are more than 15 million refugees in the world, all as a result of war. At any day, there are wars, in which people are killing other people – and often it’s usually the innocent who suffer.

Let us hope that the Ukraine doesn't become yet another statistic...

 

ALWAYS THE INNOCENT

 

Nik Morton

 

Sarajevo, ruins near the Vrbanja bridge - Wikipedia commons

 

May, 1993, Sarajevo

I had thought it would be cold in the chill wind of Sarajevo's Bogomil cemetery, but I didn't feel a thing. Standing quite alone amidst the pockmarked once-fine tombstones, I looked down at the fresh grave, bereft of flowers because not even weeds survived long here. A surprising mixture of emotions coursed through me: anger, hate, despair, and great sadness: all these manifestations of humanity racked me as I looked upon her name carved in the simple wooden cross. But most of all I experienced an abiding love, for what we had shared and been to each other.

When only eight, we had watched the 1984 Winter Olympics, enjoying the bequest to our school by a Bosnian philanthropist.

Marta was Bosnian; I'm Rihad, a Croatian Muslim. We played in the streets, oblivious of our country's tragic future. Boy and girl, in love, the same the world over.

We were book-lovers, and enjoyed reading to each other from the world's classics. Our favourites were Dickens, Cervantes, Hasek, Kumicic, Bozic, Virgil, Popa and Shakespeare.

We both liked history at school. Marta and I grew up with this sense of a new order emerging, throwing off the shackles of the doctrinaire past. Our future seemed so full of promise, so bright.

We had hoped that one day Sarajevo's name would no longer be linked with the start of the first world war - the assassination of the arch-duke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his consort: the place, Princip Bridge, is marked by the student assassin's footprints in the pavement; now, there are so many assassins around, it would be pointless to mark their footprints.

 
Our two families were close. Inevitably, we married - about a year before the fighting broke out - and honeymooned in the once-beautiful old walled city of Dubrovnik, a city founded thirteen hundred years ago by - irony of ironies! - refugees fleeing the destruction of their Greco-Roman city. Here, too, as early as the fourteenth century, an old people's home was built and slavery was abolished. An enlightened place, then, where we spent blissful days and nights.
 
Marta and I strolled Dubrovnik's old narrow steep streets, with their shadows, overhanging lanterns and flowers, and gazed at the seemingly immutable old Sveta Klara convent where Europe's first orphanage was founded in 1432.
 
We prayed in the small Renaissance chapel of Sveti Spas and visited the monastery's library of old manuscripts and pictures; here, we viewed a painting of the city before the great earthquake of 1667, not appreciating an equally devastating future awaiting us and this city. The statue of the city's patron saint, Sveti Blasius, held a model of the city in his hand - ‘until,’ Sanala, an evacuated friend said, ‘it was blown off...’
 
Sometimes we made love in the wheat-fields, breathing in the fragrance of oleander, camellias, orange trees and each other. At Dubrovnik we felt invincible in our love.
 
We had no idea how it all went so very very wrong. Greedy men in power grasping more land and power, perhaps. Whatever their reasons, they seem totally inadequate to explain the horrors inflicted.
 
With growing unease on our return to the village, Marta and I watched the newsreels until the fighting was too close.
 
Then, our families packed their most precious belongings and fled with so many others into Sarajevo.

For the first few weeks, the city could support us; but the flow of frightened refugees continued to fill the city's streets. Food became scarce, and the black market flourished.

 
Electricity interruptions were commonplace.
 
Then the siege began.
 
Street fighting started as various factions formed, even neighbour against neighbour, some groups composed of looters - sadly, there are always those who will profit from the misfortune of others.
 
Now, the city's survivors scrabble in the wreckage of a once-proud and beautiful city. Everything about this civil war is prefaced with once-, it seems. The people walk as if drugged, lacking sleep, sanitation and even hope.
 
We earnestly hoped the European Community would help us, that they would enforce a 'cessation of hostilities' - euphemistic jargon for 'stop the killing'.
 
Through the countless worthless cease-fires, we never gave up hope that one day we would be rescued. The humanitarian convoys bolstered our repeatedly dashed hopes. We could see the shame and frustration in the young UN soldiers' faces. They were simply feeding us until the inevitable end.
 
Marta and I had been foraging for wood and food - the rest of our family were too ill or too scared to venture out. Returning, we had pockets crammed with grass and an armful of books each.
 
Marta's red-rimmed eyes still managed tears, even after shedding so many, at the thought of burning books to survive: we had to sterilise the water retrieved from the drains. The Miljacka River was the only moving thing that could enter and leave Sarajevo with impunity; but tackling its muddy banks was often too dangerous.
 
When we turned the corner and saw the devastation of our friend's home, we were shaken. A mortar bomb had destroyed our families, huddled together, Moslem and Bosnian, in a friend's cellar.
 
I find it difficult to relive those awful moments of realisation, when those you love dear are gone, snatched from you before their time, by the will of some military man.
 
Of course the fact the perpetrators were Serbian is of less relevance than the fact that people of any kind could commit these acts. There are no victors in a war, this is a universal axiom, yet the people who direct their military men seem to ignore this truth. And the innocent suffer; it's always the innocent!
 
Later, in the ruins, we listened to the car radio hooked up to an old battery. Soldier of Happiness is the most popular song: ‘I don't like bullets, You can kill my summer but my spring will survive. If a bullet should shoot me, please don't cry.’
 
We cried over our lost friends and family. Alagic the sublime pianist died from shrapnel wounds, Sanala of the shining eyes and tender heart from gangrene; and Alan, Muhamed and Rosa were mortared as they tended wounded children. Good loving people with talents to share, to bring happiness into other lives, all gone.
 
Afterwards, we burned our books in the roofless kitchen, and heated water and grass. We shared the grass soup. We shared everything we could.
 
When we had finished, our stomachs still rumbled.
 
Marta looked wan, cupping the chipped mug in her thin hands, her dark hair straggly and her brown eyes lacking the old lustre. My heart ached, though I wondered what state I presented to her: no better, I felt sure.
 
We didn't speak much now. As one, we stood up. The meagre fire spat sparks - the cover of Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man crinkled and curled in the embers, then it was gone, blackened beyond recognition, like our homeland.
 
Gripping our cherished copy of Shakespeare to my chest, I held Marta's hand and we strode over the rubble and across the street.
 
Often in the last few weeks we had spoken about the poor demented souls who had had enough, who decided to commit suicide by simply strolling outside in broad daylight, down streets once tree-lined and bustling with life, echoing with the sounds of leather- and copper-ware vendors, of sellers of filigree work and linen cloth sewn with fine gold and silver thread; streets vibrant with the songs of birds and the discord of vehicles.
 
The Begova Dzamija mosque is silent now, its forecourt's covered fountain is dry and no worshippers perform their ritual washing. Water is a luxury, to be hoarded.

Everywhere you look, there are buckets, guarded by old men and children, under drain-spouts, ready to catch any rain.
 
Instead of the city's usual sounds there is the staccato report of automatic weapons, the crump of mortar shells, and the crying and moaning of an abandoned people.
 
As we boldly walked the wide street of Obala Marsala Tita that runs alongside the municipal park now stripped of its bark and firewood, I quoted from the Serbian poet, Vasco Popa, his words resembling so many menacing signals of despair in a seemingly empty universe,
 
‘We danced the sun dance,
 
Around the lime in the midst of the heart.’
 
And Marta looked up and smiled, adding,
 
‘The miserable have no other medicine but only hope; I have hope to live.’
 
She was ever hopeful, ever cheerful, and I ached with love for her and dismissed the rest of the quotation from Measure for measure - ‘...and am prepared to die.’
 
At that blessed moment of togetherness we kissed amidst the rubble. The bullet-scored smoke-blackened buildings shimmered, transformed into waves of wheat, the debris-strewn cracked paving-slabs became warm earth under our feet, our bodies revelled in the heat of a glorious summer sun, and the fragrance of oleander was in the air: we were shot by a sniper. A single bullet - we even shared that - killed us both.
 
The picture of us lying in each other's embrace was sent round the world, courtesy of satellite technology. For a day and a night, we lay there, and my lonely ethereal self hovered watchful over us, waiting for someone to defy the snipers and retrieve our earthly vessels, to accord them some last ritual of remembrance and thanks for our all too brief lives.
 
Eventually, two brave UN soldiers dodged bullets to carry us into shelter. That evening, under cover of darkness, we were buried.
 
As I gaze down at Marta's cross, I smile. She must have been uncertain about her incorporeal state, for only now has she been able to take on her old form. The stresses and privations of the last year have washed away from her features: she rises from the mound of fresh soil smiling and beautiful.
 
I take her hands in mine and kiss her.
 
As one, floating a little above the cemetery, we turn and stare at the orange halo over our strife-torn city. We feel sad, not only for the dead and dying, the bereaved and injured; we feel sorrow for all the men - and some women - responsible for death and destruction throughout the world. Perhaps if they too had enjoyed love like ours they would not commit such heinous crimes. They cannot comprehend that whatever they do, they cannot vanquish love.
 
I hold Marta tenderly and feel tears.
 
We laugh, not appreciating until now that ghosts could cry.
 
There are many ghosts crying in this once-beautiful land.
 
And Marta remembers another quotation, from Virgil, ‘Love conquers all things: let us too give in to Love.’

***

Dedicated to Bosko Brckic, Admira Ismic, little Marza and all the other dead, wounded, maimed, and bereaved in former Yugoslavia – and indeed in all war-torn lands…

Wikipedia commons

This is the Suada and Olga bridge (previously Vrbanja bridge) of Sarajevo, named after Suada Dilberovic and Olga Sucic, the first victims shot a the beginning of the Siege of Sarajevo.

***

Obviously, this is a fictional treatment inspired by a real event. The real victims were left on the Vrbanja bridge for eight days for fear of snipers. They were reburied in 1996.

Previously published in The New Coastal Press, 2010, and in the now out-of-print collection, When the Flowers are in Bloom (2011).

Copyright Nik Morton, 2014.

 

My short story collection Spanish Eye,

featuring Leon Cazador, private eye in 22 cases is  published by Crooked Cat Publishing and can be obtained from

Amazon UK here

Amazon COM here

 

The shot heard round the world

The phrase ‘the shot heard round the world’ has a specific origin but since then has been used as a means to describe various incidents, from world-shattering events to sporting achievements, whether golf, baseball or even darts.

The phrase was coined by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Concord Hymn of 1836 and it refers to the weapon discharge that signalled the beginning of the American War of Independence, referred to as the American Revolutionary War.

 

Oppressive government was beginning to wear down the colonials in thirteen colonies of British North America and the Massachusetts Colony was ripe for sedition in the spring of 1775. Conflict appeared inevitable and preparations by the Americans went on throughout the previous winter, producing arms and munitions and clandestinely training militia, including the minutemen. The Governor, General Gage, obtained secret knowledge of the preparations and decided to counter them by sending a force out of Boston to confiscate the weapons stored in the village of Concord and also capture the leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were staying at nearby Lexington.

The atmosphere in Boston was tense and the colonials set up a messaging system to pass on news of the advancing British troops. Paul Revere, a metal-worker, arranged for a signal to be sent by lantern from the steeple of North Church – which figures in that enjoyable film National Treasure. On the night of 18 April, 1775 the lantern alarm was sent and Paul Revere and William Dawes followed it by riding inland to spread the warning. In the pre-dawn light of the following day, the beating drums and peeling church bells summoned about seventy militiamen to the town green of Lexington. They lined up in battle formation as the redcoats approached through the morning fog.

 

My wife Jen and I visited here in July 1997...

 

Statue of a minuteman

 

A skirmish at Lexington during the British advance found the militia outnumbered and they fled. However, at the Old North Bridge that spanned the Concord River, five full companies of minutemen and five non-minutemen militia occupied the hill overlooking the access to the bridge while other supporters continued to stream in, eventually numbering about 500 against the combined force of the British Light Infantry companies totalling about 110 men.

North Bridge

 

The British broke ranks and fled, to be rescued by the reinforcements of the Second Duke of Northumberland. They then marched back to Boston under heavy fire in a tactical withdrawal. In the days following, the Siege of Boston would begin and the French would side with the Americans to help them win the war.

Emerson’s poem was written for the event of dedicating a memorial by the Old North Bridge and it runs:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard ‘round the world,

The foe long since in silence slept,
Alike the Conqueror silent sleeps,
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone,
That memory may their deed redeem,
When like our sires our sons are gone.

Spirit! who made those freemen dare
To die, or leave their children free,
Bid time and nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and Thee.

Naturally, the shot couldn’t be heard, he was using artistic license, but the repercussions of the first shot were indeed felt around the globe – even to this day. Nobody really knows whether a ‘farmer’ – militiaman – or a soldier of the British army fired the first shot of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

Another shot that was heard round the world was that which assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June, 1914. His killers were Serbian nationalists. The Archduke was in Sarajevo to assert Austrian imperial authority over Bosnia, a Slavic territory.

Painting of the assassination of the Archduke

 

This assassination triggered the cascade of events that quickly produced war, though the causes of the war were multiple and complex. After the assassination, Austro-Hungary didn’t rush into any decision about a response but waited for three weeks while a large part of the army was on leave to help in the gathering of the harvest.

On 23 July, assured by unconditional support of the Germans if war broke out, Austro-Hungary sent an ultimatum to Serbia, and among the demands was that Austrian agents must be allowed to take part in the investigation, since they held Serbia responsible for the assassination. Amazingly, the Serbian Government accepted all the terms, except that of the participation of the Austrian agents in the inquiry, which it saw as a violation of its sovereignty. Austro-Hungary rejected the Serbian reply and broke diplomatic relations and declared war on Serbia on 28 July, proceeding to bombard Belgrade the following day.

This prompted Austro-Hungary and Russia to order the general mobilisation of their armies. The Germans, having pledged their support to Austro-Hungary, sent Russia an ultimatum to stop mobilisation within twelve hours.

On 1 August, the ultimatum having expired, the German ambassador to Russia formally declared war.

The next day, Germany occupied Luxembourg, as a preliminary step in the German’s Schlieffen Plan, which required Germany to attack France first and then Russia. Another ultimatum was delivered to Belgium, requesting free passage for the German army on the way to France. Don’t mind us, while we march through your land to invade your neighbour. Not surprisingly, the Belgians refused.

Almost at the eleventh hour, Kaiser Wilhelm II asked the German generals to cancel the invasion of France in the hope that this would keep Britain out of the war. Horrified by the prospect of the utter ruin of the Schlieffen Plan, the German military refused on the grounds that it would be impossible to change the rail schedule – typical...

On 3 August Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium the next day. Britain had vacillated over the growing storm clouds, partly due to the monarchy’s connections to the Kaiser, partly due to a reluctance to go to war when still unprepared. Nobody had listened to ‘warmonger’ Churchill. But the violation of Belgian neutrality - to which Prussia, France and Britain were all committed to guarantee - gave Britain little choice but to declare war on Germany on 4 August. Next year will mark 100 years since the beginning of the slaughter of millions of young men, the snuffing out of a generation.

The conflict of the First World War had a profound effect on society and nations and began the disintegration of the British Empire.

Thanks to radio and television, the shot that was actually heard round the world was the bullet that killed President John F Kennedy in Dallas on 22 November, 1963. Well, three shots are supposed to have been heard by witnesses. Kennedy was hit in the head and throat while being driven in a motorcade past the School Book Depository building. Governor Connally was also shot. Kennedy slumped in his wife Jackie’s arms and the limousine was driven at high speed to Parklands Hospital. He died thirty-five minutes after being shot. He was the fourth US president to be assassinated.

The image that is indelibly fixed

Besides changing the course of history, the Kennedy assassination spawned an amazing collection of conspiracy theories, among them: Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, the Mafia, the oil industry, anti-Castro groups, Castro supporters, Krushchev, Freemasons, Onassis and the Illuminati, the Corsican Mafia, the Israelis, Frank Sinatra, Soviet hard-liners and anti-Civil Rights agents in the CIA, many of which are quite fascinating even if totally untrue…

 

 

When the Flowers are in Bloom

I've taken a leaf out of Charles Whipple's book (see A Matter of Tea below) and will be donating all my royalties from this e-book to the survivors of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. As will the publisher, Solstice Publishing.

My Foreword says, ‘Reading about the cataclysmic devastation that hit Japan in March, I was greatly moved by the attitude of the survivors. People of all ages went out of their way to help each other. Looting seemed a rare event. There was a determination to overcome this terrible adversity. Lives and towns would be rebuilt, eventually, even if it would take years. The people would endure.


‘It is this theme, the strength of the human spirit that I have attempted to capture over the years in many of my short stories. Some of these tales may seem sad or traumatic but, despite that, I trust that hope, love, honor and integrity shine through, transcending the blight of evildoers, disability and natural disaster.

‘As writers, we strive to walk in the shoes of our characters. Fiction writers lie in order to grasp the truth. In some small way, I hope these stories reveal truths about the human condition.’

Blurb

These twelve diverse stories travel far and wide, over the globe and through history, to examine the human condition. Whether a quest for atonement decades after the Second World War, or to repay a debt of honor, Japanese characters reveal their fragility. In Sarajevo, Bosnia or the grim projects of New York, life must go on.

Characters show us that disability is not a handicap. Forgiveness and redemption are human qualities the world is short of today, perhaps. They’re needed by those who disinter the past and graves from an old war in Spain. Birth and death – they’re here. So is honor, duty, courage and love.

All royalties which would normally go to the author and the publisher will go directly to help the Earthquake and tsunami victims.

The e-book can be ordered from the Solstice Publishing site (http://www.solsticepublishing.com/) or other online outlets, including Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/When-Flowers-are-Bloom-ebook/dp/B004ZG6IXS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=A317O7WZ1CN6AQ&s=books&qid=1304685711&sr=8-1