In A Colder War Britain’s secret intelligence operations in the Middle East are severely curtailed; botched schemes and the deaths of double agents suggests to the spymasters that a mole is a work. When SIS’s most adroit spy Wallinger, and head of station at Ankara, is killed in a plane crash the chief Amelia Levene turns to sidelined spook Tom Kell to investigate. He is the only one that knows the personal background of Amelia’s affair with the deceased spy and has been left in the cold since witnessing a covert US rendition.
The book has a knowing sense of humour which leavens the tragic ethical dilemmas that occur as the story unfolds, allying the author with the Deighton and Allbeury school of spy novelists. As the associates of the deceased agent gather at his funeral Thomas Kell explores the personal and professional ties of Wallinger. Was the deceased spy compromised through his love affairs, as is likely because he was with a lover at an island hideaway when he died. Reporting from Turkey and Eastern Europe Kell delves in a labyrinth of deceit and misdirection: “everything was now a clue, a tell, a signal – or a blind alley”. And clues, tells, and blind alleys are laid down by those that are allies and foes. These factors are the air of espionage fiction in some stratagem of misdirection.
But it is this clever game-play combined with subtle subterfuge and mask wearing with colleagues that makes the novel a riveting read. Aficionados of the modern spy novel will recognize the mentions of Philby and Angleton – purveyors of that so descriptive phrase – “the wilderness of mirrors”. Yet while the narrative drive to unmask the mole depends on clever tradecraft it is the human dimension of betrayal that carries the impact. As each side tries to outwit the other it’s those elements of pathos and tragedy that gives it edge – much as in the best of Deighton and Allbeury.
A Colder War (2014) is Charles Cumming’s second Kell novel and his seventh in all.
