A READER’S GUIDE TO
JOHN ALTMAN THRILLERS
JOHNALTMAN.NET
A Reader’s Guide to John Altman Thrillers by John Altman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
CONTENTS I’m an author of spy novels, and I love my job.
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A Gathering of Spies
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A Game of Spies
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Deception
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The Watchmen
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The Art of the Devil
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Disposable Asset
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False Flag
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The Korean Woman
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I’M AN AUTHOR OF SPY NOVELS, AND I LOVE MY JOB. No-one is writing breathless spy action as well as John Altman. —Leslie Silbert, internationally bestselling author of The Intelligencer Writing spy novels is both fun and challenging; I get to write about chases and gunfights; sometimes I even get to say things that I think matter. About international relations. About the lessons of history. About people…and the secrets they keep. As I write this in my study, my family is elsewhere in the house, winding down from the day and getting ready for bed. Homework is being finished, baths run, teeth brushed. Outside, on my quiet suburban block in Princeton, New Jersey, families are executing variations on this theme. We live two blocks from the elementary school, and just about a mile from the university campus. Our neighbors are ordinary people living ordinary lives—teachers and software developers, doctors and musicians, scientists and accountants. But I happen to know that one of my neighbors, a physicist, has been approached by the defense complex to apply his expertise to satellite surveillance. Another works as a mathematician for the NSA. Another, a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, specializes in cutting-edge missile interception technology. It’s entirely possible that still others work for foreign powers—Princeton is a ripe target for academic espionage—but if so, they’ve managed to keep that secret safe from me.
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This intersection of domestic and exotic, of ordinary and extraordinary, of public and private, fascinates me. It’s been the subject of all my books, whether they take place during World War II or the Cold War or the so-called War on Terror, in America or Russia or Korea or the Middle East. Join me, and let’s explore together this place where light meets dark. If you enjoy the samples, please read and share my books, and join the conversation by following me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Often, we’ll find, this place involves deception… between countries, colleagues, neighbors, spouses, lovers. Even between different parts of ourselves. Because we all tell ourselves stories to explain why we do what we do. But sometimes, we lie.
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A GATHERING OF SPIES
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A GATHERING OF SPIES A B E A U T I F U L N A Z I S P Y A ND A N E N I G M AT I C B R I T I S H D O U B L E A G E N T M AT C H W I T S I N T H I S G R I P P I N G W O R L D WA R I I T HR I L L E R
This atmospheric debut thriller smells deliciously of Hitchcock and 1940s British spy films… An irresistible page-turner. —Publishers Weekly Gorgeous, cunning, and lethal, Katarina Heinrich is America’s worst nightmare. For years, the German spy has been deep undercover, posing as the happy wife of a Princeton scientist. Now she is rushing home with key intelligence pertaining to the atomic bomb. If she reaches her destination, the war will be lost. To stop her, the Allies turn to Professor Harry Winterbotham, an MI5 agent whose brilliance is matched only by his inscrutability. As Winterbotham hatches his own secret plan—one with the potential to deliver the world’s greatest weapon into the hands of the Nazis—the two spies play a deadly game of cat and mouse across the United States and Europe. From one breathtaking double cross to the next, A Gathering of Spies builds to a stunning climax among the best in espionage fiction. Lightning-paced, atmospheric, and irresistible, it is a classic story of World War II that thrills from first page to last. B E H I ND T HE B O O K At the tail end of summer, 1998, I joined my father on a train traveling from Beijing to Moscow—the Trans-Siberian express. For 8
more than two weeks we traveled west across China, Mongolia, Siberia, and Russia, in rickety coach cars pulled by an old-fashioned coal-burning engine. Days passed between stops. Soon, I’d read the half-dozen books I’d brought along. My eyes turned to my Dad’s collection, wondering what might get me through to the next remote Siberian outpost. One book stood out. Earlier that summer, I’d seen Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Somehow the movie had snuck into theaters without crossing my radar, so I’d been completely unprepared for what I witnessed. I was twenty-eight years old. Until then, my awareness of World War II had been a second-hand awareness, filtered through Raiders of the Lost Ark and Captain America comics. The first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan knocked me on my ass. In the months since seeing the movie, I’d struggled to get my mind around what it might have been like to struggle up Omaha Beach under heavy enemy fire. And so one of the father’s books, on that long Siberian railroad journey, stood out to me immediately. The Unlikely Spy, by Daniel Silva, was set during World War Two. I’d been a passionate reader since early childhood (see SOME BOOKS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE). But this was the first spy novel I’d ever read, excepting some Ian Fleming that had turned me off because it was so different from the Roger Moore Bond movies I’d grown up with. (Since then, the Fleming novels have risen in my estimation and the Moore movies, although undeniably fun, have foundered.) The Unlikely Spy was as much of a revelation as Saving Private Ryan. The behind-the-scenes espionage game was every bit as fascinating as the war with guns and bombs. On that first reading, I was particularly struck by Silva’s inclusion of Hitler and Churchill as 9
characters. I told my father that it took huge brass balls to try to write Hitler. He answered that actually, it was pretty standard for the genre. And that, in his opinion, The Unlikely Spy was Silva’s spin on an earlier novel, Ken Follett’s The Eye of the Needle. Hm. After getting home, I started writing a new book. (By then I’d been trying—and failing—to publish a novel for twelve years, as detailed in ABOUT ME.) This would be my first World War Two book and my first spy thriller. And, goddamnit, I would write Hitler. If it was ‘pretty standard for the genre’, after all, why not? But before writing, I read. I read The Eye of the Needle and found it even better than The Unlikely Spy. I read The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth. I read Hitler’s Spies by Kahn, and Fatherland and Enigma by Harris, and SS Intelligence by Blandford and The Game of the Foxes by Farago, and Meeting at Potsdam by Charles Mee, Jr. and Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman. And I read William Shirer’s masterpiece The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. That was the one that put all the rest in context. At last, I felt ready to take a stab at telling a story occurring more than a quarter-century before my birth. And so I sat down at my keyboard, cracked my knuckles, and started my first World War II novel. That became A Gathering of Spies. It provided my first sale—to the same editor, as it happened, who had published The Eye of the Needle more than twenty years before. And it set me on a path of writing spy thrillers that to this day, more often than not, feature strong female antiheroes. For twelve years, I’d been trying to publish a book. Now I’d finally succeeded—and with more of a bang, in terms of payday and publisher, than I’d ever expected. But suddenly I found myself confronting a problem that had never even occurred to me: What next? 10
A sizzling zinger of a classic spy story, full of action, suspense, and wheels within wheels. —Stephen Coonts, New York Times bestselling author R E A D M O R E O N A G AT HE R I N G O F S P I E S BUY NOW
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A GAME OF SPIES
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A GAME OF SPIES A D E A D LY W E B O F D E C E I T E N S N A R E S T W O S P I E S W I T H A C O MP L I C AT E D P E R S O N A L H I S T O R Y I N T H I S E L E C T R I F Y I N G TA L E O F W O R L D WA R I I
A powerful historical spy tale that never slows down… a deadly game of trump. Fans of the genre will want to read this superb World War II novel that brings the era alive. —Midwest Book Review Eva Bernhardt was a naive twenty-year-old when the rakish spymaster William Hobbs seduced her into working for the British secret service. Now, a year later, she is a tough and cynical operative stationed in Berlin, her hatred of the Nazis matched only by her distrust of the man who abandoned her to the whims of MI6. Tasked with discovering Hitler’s plans for invading France, Eva unearths what appears to be a vital piece of information. What she doesn’t realize is that the Germans know she is a spy and are using her to mislead the Allies. It is up to Hobbs to rescue Eva and prevent a military disaster. Standing in his way are her seething resentment and two of the Gestapo’s most sinister agents. From one astonishing plot twist to the next, A Game of Spies is a riveting story of cloak-and-dagger intrigue in the tradition of Eric Ambler and John le Carré. B E H I ND T HE B O O K With my soon-to-be-published first novel off to the presses came the question: What next? 13
My editor posed the question over lunch. I had no answer ready. Instead, I thought out loud. My riff on The Eye of the Needle had turned out pretty well. The Day of the Jackal was another nifty spy thriller. Maybe I could write a sequel to A GATHERING OF SPIES, set a few years later in the 1950s, and this time use Jackal as a jumping-off point. Later that day, the editor called my agent and made a deal for ‘Untitled Altman Sequel’. I was learning quickly that in publishing, pitching something as a spin on something else isn’t a drawback—it can often be a selling point, as it allows the publisher to position the novel in a known niche. But I really had been just thinking out loud. I had no book, and no ideas beyond what I’d said. For the next half a year, I researched, interviewed people, and racked my brains, tried to figure out what the hell to write. But the book wouldn’t come. Sometimes that happens. (Many years later, the book came at last in a different form—see THE ART OF THE DEVIL) At last, I called my editor and admitted I was beat. The book I’d rather write, I said, was based on a true story I remembered reading in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. When I told my editor the story, he agreed that there was a book in it. And so the switch was made. Luckily, the signed contract for ‘Untitled Altman Sequel’ left us both some wiggle room. A brief paragraph from Shirer’s book had made a powerful impression on me. In 1940, a German plane carrying secret plans for the imminent attack on the Low Countries had crashed in Belgium. The French and Low Countries had been made aware of the plans—but had wondered: Was it too good to be true? Were the plans real, or a German deception? This kernel of an idea combined with Le Carré’s The Spy Who
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Came In From In the Cold, which I had recently read for the first time—and suddenly, I had my second book. It would not technically be a sequel. Instead, it would be a sort of soft prequel, featuring some secondary characters from A GATHERING OF SPIES. It would take place during the so-called Phoney War of 1940, after war had been declared but before real hostilities had commenced. And it would answer a question posed in the book Strange Victory by historian Ernest R. May: If the Allies in May 1940 were in most respects militarily superior, were not badly led, and did not suffer from demoralization (not yet, at least), then what accounts for Germany’s six-week triumph? A Game of Spies featured complex flawed characters and the gray tones of an old movie. It was perhaps more original than my first book, if also perhaps less crowd-pleasing. Critics loved it. (“You can’t bribe reviews like this!” my agent crowed at the time.) Sales fell short of A GATHERING OF SPIES. But I had gotten not only to indulge my literary bent, but to prove to myself and others that I was more than a one-trick pony. When the question of a follow-up came around again, I knew what I wanted to do. I’d been filling in the gaps in my spy novel education, and had discovered Eric Ambler. His tales of fish-out-of-water entangled in morally-gray international intrigue had fired my imagination. I was ready to take a stab at my first contemporary spy thriller: DECEPTION.
“A Game of Spies” ranks with the best espionage thrillers. —Orlando Sentinel R E A D M O R E O N A G A ME O F S P I E S BUY NOW 15
DECEPTION
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DECEPTION A YO U N G W O M A N F I ND S HE R S E L F I N H O T WAT E R I N T H I S I N T E R N AT I O N A L T HR I L L R I D E When Hannah Gray discovers that her lover and business partner has implicated her in a massive act of insurance fraud, she flees Chicago rather than going to the police. An Adriatic cruise will help to clear her head, she reasons, and give her time to plan her next move. On the ship, Hannah meets Renee Epstein, an elderly woman whose husband is also a fugitive, on the run from a top-secret government agency that wants to use his scientific research for a purpose he never intended. Scribbled into the couple’s guidebook is the formula for a powerful new energy source with incredible destructive capabilities. Hannah borrows the book, and shortly thereafter, the Epsteins are murdered. Suddenly Hannah is the target of an assassin whose talents are as unique as they are deadly. Pursued from the Greek islands to Istanbul to the South of France, Hannah hopes to stay alive long enough to turn her bad fortune around. Thousands of miles from everything and everyone she knows, she decides to reinvent herself—or die trying. B E H I ND T HE B O O K My third published novel, like my first, originated with a trip I’d taken with my father. (He loves to travel, and has brought me on lots of astonishing trips over the years. We’ve visited every continent together, even Antarctica. The book for that one has yet to be written…)
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When I was in my mid-twenties, we took a cruise from Venice to Istanbul, through the Greek Isles. Over the course of two weeks, we visited some of the most beautiful places on earth. As an aspiring author, I knew immediately that I had to set a story here. And so I wrote a novel called Gravy, about a trio of horror novelists who take an identical cruise. The writers are engaged in a contest, unbeknownst to the rest of the ship, to see who can scare the other two the most. Needless to say, things go wrong and the contest gets all too real. The book was half-horror, half-suspense, and half-baked. That novel remains unpublished. But when it came time to follow up A GAME OF SPIES, I’d been reading Eric Ambler and his tales of international intrigue set in Istanbul. The cruise popped immediately back into my mind. I dug up my old copy of Gravy and found that I had recorded first-hand, at some length, my impressions of the ship and the islands, of Venice and Istanbul. A lot of ingredients went into the stew. Eric Ambler; my new wheelhouse of spy-thrillers-with-strong-female-antiheroes; and my interest in high-stakes physics, which had been re-awakened while researching A GATHERING OF SPIES when I read Richard Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! I was never much good at math or science. But the science-fiction reader in me has always been fascinated by the implications of relativity and quantum physics. My clumsy but sincere interest in big physics pops up in several of my books—most notably Deception and THE KOREAN WOMAN. In high school, I had devoured the hard sci-fi of Larry Niven. I also loved a book called The Science in Science Fiction, by Peter Nicholls. I’d spend hours poring over brightly-colored pictures of black holes, of astronauts getting sucked past event horizons and turned spaghetti-thin. At sixteen, I tried writing a book about using black 18
holes to achieve time travel. I entered a contest with the book, and didn’t even get an honorable mention. With Eric Ambler on one side of my keyboard and Stephen Hawking on the other, I set to work. In Deception, the character of Keyes is driven by personal grief to take reckless chances with his particle accelerator. A brilliant scientist, sensing the danger, absconds with key formulae, and (relatively) innocent fish-of-water Hannah Gray finds herself caught in the middle. As I was writing the book…9/11 happened. At the time, I lived in downtown New York, not too far from Ground Zero. I smelled the burning fires every time the wind changed. For weeks after the attack, my street was closed by the National Guard. I lived in fear—of the follow-up attack, the anthrax, the sniper, the suicide bomber. And I was also very, very angry. My mind was already turning ahead. The next book must address 9/11. And it must try to balance my fear and my anger against my principles. THE WATCHMEN would be my darkest book yet. READ MORE ON DECEPTION BUY NOW
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THE WATCHMEN
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THE WATCHMEN I N A C I A S A F E H O U S E , A R E L U C TA N T I N T E R R O G AT O R A ND H I S S U B J E C T F I ND T H AT T HE Y A R E T HE NE X T TA R G E T S O N A R U T HL E S S A S S A S S I N’ S H I T L I S T
Forget the competition for thriller of the year. John Altman has already won it, with The Watchmen. —St. Louis Post-Dispatch Psychiatrist Louis Finney is still haunted by nightmares stemming from the work in mind control and psychological conditioning he helped to pioneer for the US government years ago. But when he is asked by his dying mentor to help with the questioning of Ali Zattout, an al-Qaeda operative, Finney finds he cannot refuse. Charismatic, intelligent, and unexpectedly cooperative, Zattout possesses information his masters in the Middle East cannot allow him to reveal. As Finney tries to determine if the terrorist is telling the truth or spinning a web of lies, a relentless killer closes in on the secret location where the two men are trapped together. Too late, Finney realizes that he is a pawn in a conspiracy whose dimensions stretch deep into the corridors of power. A provocative suspense story that peers into the dark corners of the war on terror, John Altman’s The Watchmen depicts the murky world of twenty-first-century espionage with thrilling style and fascinating psychological depth. B E H I ND T HE B O O K I wrote The Watchmen in an apartment on Fourth Street in Manhattan, not far from the site of the former World Trade Center. When the 21
wind shifted, I could still smell the fires burning underground: a toxic mix of plastic and steel, chemicals and human remains. The book addresses the ethics and the efficacy of so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ during the War on Terror. It was completed before information on the tactics actually used the CIA had leaked out. We had not yet heard of waterboarding, of Abu Ghraib, of black sites or Bagram. To write the book, I made educated guesses (see MY PRESENTATION TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPY MUSEUM and HOW TO WRITE CONVINCING SPY FICTION ABOUT HIGHLY CLASSIFIED SUBJECTS). Upon publication, I was assured off-the-record by a former intelligence officer that my speculations had been “pretty close to the mark.” During the writing, I felt everyday fear of an imminent follow-up attack, and fury at those behind 9/11. Yet I realized that if America abandoned the principles that made it worth fighting for, the ‘War on Terror’ became a dubious proposition at best. Needless to say, the questions I was grappling with had no easy answers. Every possible road seemed to lead to more darkness. And so The Watchmen, although on the surface a spy thriller like my other books, seems to me to be in essence a horror novel. A monster is chained in a basement. A mad scientist experiments with split personalities and a lightning machine (“It’s Alive!”). At the end, the fantastical elements are fully revealed when the villain, wearing a black cowl, faces a hero wearing a white robe. Our first image of said hero may evoke the “watching” of the title—but our last glimpse of Finney involves of a jack o’lantern lost in shadow, surrounded by howling wind and endless night. (And does that jack o’lantern wear a slanted and macabre grin? Oh yes. I would imagine that it does.) 22
I reached no pat conclusions about what level of ethical compromise is acceptable, in defending ourselves, if any. Instead, I was brought back to the words of George Orwell: ‘People sleep peaceably in their bed at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.’ Many have said that the book provides more questions than answers. Some find this rewarding, others frustrating. More than any of my other books, The Watchmen divides readers. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, this bookmarked the end of the first stage in my career. After so much darkness, I needed a break. For the next several years, I would concentrate on finding light. I met my future wife. We married, moved out of New York City, and started a family. During these years I toyed with different books, but didn’t finish anything. After my son was born, I decided it was time to get back into the game. I found myself returning to an earlier idea. The never-written sequel to A GATHERING OF SPIES was still with me… clamoring to be brought into the world, at last.
This is perfect pleasure.The people in Altman’s world are three-dimensional, original, completely outside the stereotypical cardboard of most suspense these days.If you like the occasional thriller, if you long for something that will not insult your intelligence as it fixes you to the edge of your seat, read The Watchmen. —Book-of-the-Month Club R E A D M O R E O N T HE WAT C HME N BUY NOW
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THE ART OF THE DEVIL
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THE ART OF THE DEVIL O NLY O NE M A N S TA ND S I N T HE WAY O F A P L O T T O M U R D E R P R E S I D E N T E I S E NH O W E R I N T H I S R I V E T I N G H I S T O R I C A L T HR I L L E R
Fast pacing and a clever plot… Altman succeeds in generating tension. —Publishers Weekly In 1955, one woman holds the key to America’s future: a ruthless and beautiful ex-Nazi assassin, posing as a housekeeper inside President Eisenhower’s isolated Gettysburg estate, awaiting her chance to murder the chief executive and change the course of history. One man stands in her way: a disgraced Secret Service agent, driven from active duty by battle fatigue. Waiting and watching: the most powerful figures of the era, including Senator Joe McCarthy, FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, Vice President Richard Nixon, and the sinister pair of German-American brothers sponsoring the attack. As the minutes tick down, the highly-trained professional killer and the discredited WWII veteran face off in a deadly game. At stake: the life and legacy of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the world’s most powerful man. B E H I ND T HE B O O K More than ten years before writing The Art of the Devil, I had pitched a very similar book as a sequel to my first novel. A contract had been signed. But the book had refused to come. Eventually, instead of a sequel to A GATHERING OF SPIES, I’d come up with a prequel (see BEHIND THE BOOK—A GAME OF SPIES). 25
But the idea had never left me. A spin on The Day of the Jackal, set in the 1950s, with a female ex-Nazi assassin antihero…I liked it. And so I went back to it. (“None of them has ever escaped my mind,” Stephen King said about his own early stabs at novels. “Not even the really bad ones.”) The Art of the Devil describes a plot to assassinate President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Inspired by a real event—the severe heart attack suffered by Eisenhower in October 1955, near the end of his first term—the book suggests that the coronary was, in fact, a failed attempt on his life, and speculates on events both preceding and following the incident. The first time I tried to write the book, I read a lot about the Fifties (most notably, perhaps, David Halberstam’s excellent The Fifties, which I read three times from cover to cover.) But I was unable to find an interesting way into the decade. Frankly, the Fifties seemed a rather pallid period in our American history. Post-war, Patti Page, Doris Day, Norman Rockwell, Father Knows Best…all very pleasant, to be sure. But where was the juice? But now I was coming at it from a different angle. After 9/11, American politics had grown more fiercely partisan. And now, again, we were again at war. When I commenced research, searching for the real beating heart of the decade, I read less history and more fiction. The Man In the Grey Flannel Suit proved a revelation. All the shiny surface of the Fifties, I realized suddenly, could be seen a reaction to the trauma of World War II and the Bomb, an attempt to paper over reality and soothe ourselves to sleep at night. Viewed through this lens, I suddenly found the era fascinating. (People keeping secrets under pleasant surfaces is an obsession of mine.) I devoured more and more books from the decade: Peyton Place and The Best of Everything, and Alas, Babylon and On the Beach and Earth Abides (from which I borrowed my protagonist’s name, Ish). I explored a little ahead of my time frame, and a little behind. 26
I read Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, to more fully understand the history of Eisenhower’s Gettysburg estate, where the bulk of the action would take place. And I kept my book relevant by keeping one eye on the current headlines, and the extraordinarily partisan nature of contemporary U.S. politics. It took only a small nudge into fiction to imagine that something like my story could really have happened … After World War II, America had been a newly-minted superpower facing a historical crossroads. During his first term, Eisenhower had revealed himself to be far more moderate than many Republicans would have liked. Alienating the base of his own party, he’d set the nation on a course which his enemies considered weak and irresolute, squandering, in their view, a singular chance to assert America’s global dominance. But if the heart attack suffered by Eisenhower in 1955 had proved fatal—as it very nearly had—Vice President Richard Nixon, a favorite of the far right, would have been installed in office, and history would have followed a very different path. The Art of the Devil worked out so nicely that after finishing I looked back at another idea I’d been toying with. As I was looking, the Edward Snowden story broke…and suddenly I had the starting point for my next book.
Creepy, violent, suspenseful, fast paced, and chockablock with unexpected twists, Altman’s latest is a gripping and thoroughly satisfying read. A must for fans of The Manchurian Candidate. —Booklist R E A D M O R E O N T HE A R T O F T HE DE V I L BUY NOW 27
DISPOSABLE ASSET
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DISPOSABLE ASSET A L O NE F E M A L E A G E N T F I ND S HE R S E L F A B A ND O NE D I N E NE M Y T E R R I T O R Y I N T H I S R I V E T I N G E S P I O N A G E T HR I L L E R
This can’t-put-it-down spy thriller from Altman introduces the most deadly and proficient young woman warrior since The Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen. —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Having completed her mission to silence an agency defector, CIA operative Cassie Bradbury finds herself cut adrift in Moscow with no documents, no tickets and no identification. Hot on her trail are the Kremlin, the Russian Mafia—and Sean Ravensdale, the disgraced ex-CIA agent who has been sent to track her down. Realizing that she has been set up and is now expendable, Cassie will need all her courage and resourcefulness to outwit her pursuers—and stay alive long enough to exact revenge on the man who recruited her, who trained her—who betrayed her. B E H I ND T HE B O O K As an author who found myself specializing in spy thrillers with female antiheroes, I was naturally drawn to La Femme Nikita and The Little Drummer Girl, two of the shining examples of the subgenre. During my break after THE WATCHMEN, I spent years toying with my own spin on these stories. I would have a young—a very young—teenage runaway, living on the wrong side of the proverbial tracks, drafted into service as an assassin by her government. Ideology would be used to indoctrinate her. But this same ideology 29
would also set her head spinning, and perhaps—herein lay the tension—eventually lead her to rebel against her masters. As a bonus, I saw a chance to fulfill a childhood fantasy by writing a Marvel superhero-type figure. My young teenage assassin would kick over-the-top ass. This meant providing a Marvel-esque origin story, complete with an Oedipus (or Elektra) complex to supply motivation. Spider-Man had Uncle Ben. Daredevil had Battlin’ Jack Murdock. My antiheroine, Cassie Bradbury, would have her surrogate father figure Julian Quinn. But for years, I couldn’t wrestle my story into shape. I knew it would take place in Russia, and as I did my research, the novel got bigger and bigger. I had come of age during the Cold War, and so part of me considered a Russia-set spy novel to be a “real” spy novel. If this was to be my first “real” spy novel, I wanted to get everything in. After writing a thousand pages, I set it aside. I would come back to it only if I could find focus. That focus came with Edward Snowden. Western intelligence agencies, Edward Snowden revealed in 2013, were not only infiltrating Islamic extremist groups and Russian sleeper cells. They were also watching you, model citizen and responsible taxpayer, via the webcam and software already installed on the computer you had bought at your local neighborhood superstore. (And this was before the Biggest of the Big-Brother technologies—Siri and Alexa—had gained much traction.) Whether you considered Snowden patriot or traitor, hero or narcissist—or, perhaps, all of the above—his revelations drove home the uneasy inverse relationship between privacy and security. And by running into the waiting arms of the Kremlin, he put a metaphorical big Red bow around the package. Other post-9/11 disclosures had raised my antennae already. 30
Suspected enemies of the state were detained indefinitely without trial, subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’. The Patriot Act had authorized roving wiretaps and government searches of business records. But these remained comfortably removed from the typical personal experience. Snowden’s leaks, by contrast, hit the average Westerner where he or she lived—in front of his or her computer. In Disposable Asset, Edward Snowden is not mentioned once by name. But his presence is felt on every page. The book evokes Snowden explicitly, telling the story of an American defector who has fled to Russia with a cache of classified documents that expose intelligence overreaching, where, having been offered sanctuary by the Kremlin, he is murdered by a CIA assassin—my kick-ass over-the-top teenaged operative. As a manhunt develops for the assassin, we witness firsthand how, in the information age, privacy has become an antiquated concept. Cell phones are remotely accessed without users’ knowledge. Facial recognition software combs through endless surveillance camera and quadcopter drone footage. Spy satellites with a resolution of five centimeters reconnoiter the earth’s surface from thousands of miles above. Infrared cameras and parabolic microphones eavesdrop through walls and closed doors. The scantest traces of blood, skin or hair lead to complete DNA profiles, with the chances of different individuals sharing identical profiles one in one billion. Disposable Asset was the first time I wrote about cutting-edge spy tech, but not the last. FALSE FLAG continues where Disposable Asset lets off, adding the real-time surveillance drone ARGUS-IS to the mix. THE KOREAN WOMAN, with the advent of the quantum computer, takes it to the next level. Disposable Asset also describes a reenergized Russian Empire, a re31
invigorated network of secret prison camps in Siberia, and a ruthless and determined inner circle at a Kremlin that harbors little respect for human rights and none whatsoever for civil liberties. My Marvel-type superheroine, as it turned out, was going to carry some pretty heavy thematic baggage. But I tried to keep it all beneath the surface, to make the story my fastest, most action-packed yet. The book received my first starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, giving me hope that I succeeded. And then the age-old question: What next? I had written spy thrillers about World War II (A GATHERING OF SPIES and A GAME OF SPIES), the Cold War (THE ART OF THE DEVIL), and the War on Terror (THE WATCHMEN). I’d set stories in America, Germany, England, and Italy and France and the Mediterranean (DECEPTION), and now Russia. But so far, I hadn’t directly confronted the most obvious geopolitical tinderbox of our time …
High on adrenaline… Cassie’s unlikely journey is mesmerizing. —Reviewingtheevidence.com READ MORE ON DISPOSABLE ASSET BUY NOW
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FALSE FLAG
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FALSE FLAG A F I E ND I S H P L O T A G A I N S T T HE U S G O V E R NME N T. A FA S C I N AT I N G A ND O R I G I N A L I S R A E L I HE R O I NE A ND A N T I HE R O I NE , AT O D D S A S T HE C L O C K T I C K S D O W N
With complex characters possessed of hard edges, this intelligent and delectable story is sophisticated, razor-sharp, and definitely one for your keeper shelf. —Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author Israeli-born Dalia Artzi, a tactical genius and specialist at Princeton in the study of maneuver warfare, uncovers a fiendish plot by a small group of Israeli fanatics to commit a horrific crime against the United States government and pin the blame on Iran. At first, Dalia, a pacifist, is hesitant to get involved. But, strong in her Jewish faith, she believes that the goal of her religion is not to crush one’s enemies but to practice tikkun olam, to repair the world. Soon Dalia has little choice but to act quickly and do what she must to prevent the unspeakable. Meanwhile, Jana, a beautiful but deadly Israeli operative taking orders from the conspiring fanatics, is determined to deftly fulfill the deadly mission entrusted to her. Once the plot has been carried out, Jana and the commanders of her mission believe that Israel’s enemies will meet with total destruction when the world’s most powerful nation retaliates. Jana is firm in her conviction that she is on the side of right and believes the ends will justify the means, however violent. Centered on a fascinating and original Israeli heroine and antiheroine, False Flag probes some of the most important political and moral conflicts of our times. Altman examines extremism in 34
its many incarnations and the complex pitfalls humans encounter when they try to do what is right, no matter the cost. In the process, he continues his tradition of creating ruthless female assassins, delivering his most terrifying creation yet. Riveting espionage, struggles of conscience, and edge-of-your-seat intrigue combine to make False Flag one of the most compelling and controversial thrillers of 2017. B E H I ND T HE B O O K False Flag is my most personal book. When I was twelve, my parents asked me if I wanted to be bar mitzvahed. They assumed I would jump at the chance, not out of religious conviction—I was then, as now, pretty much agnostic— but because I’d already put in years of Hebrew School and the payday was just around the corner. (Bar and bat mitzvahs are notoriously profitable for the youngsters moving into adult life, who are showered with celebratory gifts.) But my parents had miscalculated. A few books, a few comics, and a good ten-speed were all I needed, and those I had. And I truly hated Hebrew School. More, the thought of chanting Hebrew in front of all my friends petrified me. And so I chose not to become bar mitzvahed, and thus in the eyes of the Jewish faith, have never been anointed a man. Be that as it may. With the bullet of the bar mitzvah dodged, I set aside any thoughts of Jewish identity and got on with my life. Not until I was researching A GATHERING OF SPIES—reading at length about World War II and the Holocaust—did I start thinking again of myself as a Jew. For the first time in my life, I found a sense of Jewish identity. And it was angry. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich made me bitterly furious. I had family in Israel, family who had survived the Holocaust. As Shirer explained what had happened during the 35
war, and the extent to which ordinary people had let it happen, I seethed and boiled. Newly-awakened to anti-Semitism, I began to see it—not wrongly—everywhere. Once I was sitting in a bar in Chicago and a guy on the stool beside me told a Jewish joke to a friend. (“What’s the difference between a canoe and a Jew?” he asked. “Sometimes a Jew tips.”) I spun on him. “I’m Jewish,” I snapped, “and I happen to be a very generous tipper, motherfucker.” Luckily for me, he apologized and backed off—otherwise, outnumbered, I could have been in real trouble. Soon after, 9/11 happened. Then the anti-Semitism I’d been describing to my friends got dragged out into the open. Suddenly America threw its full weight behind Israel. Instead of second-guessing that nation’s habit of preemptive killing, America said: Teach us. Over the next few years, my initial fear and anger after 9/11 became replaced by more nuanced emotions. I started questioning America’s ongoing wars and Israel’s preemptive doctrines. I wondered what the end game might be. Not until years later would I read a quote, by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, that summed up what I was coming to think: “The majority of (Israel’s) leaders have elevated and sanctified the tactical method of combating terror and existential threats at the expense of the true vision, statesmanship, and genuine desire to reach a political solution that is necessary for peace to be attained”. I see myself as a left-leaning moderate. I have no doubt that anti-Semitism is widespread and virulent. I believe that we Jews have the right to protect ourselves. But I also see the hardline Israeli view, the expanding settlements, and crackdowns on Palestinian protests, as counter-productive. An Israel that inflames hatred is not a safe Israel. Nor is it a just one. I see myself as moderate—but many in my family see me as irra36
tionally dovish. We have trouble discussing Israel reasonably, my family and I. Tempers fray. Voices rise. Jews love to argue. So the thought of having the discussion in a novel—where nobody could interrupt me—was irresistible. As with THE WATCHMEN, which let me work through my ambivalence about the War on Terror, False Flag let me explore at my own pace an issue that seemed impossibly tangled. My proxies would be a hard-right zealot, Jana, and a left-leaning professor of military history, Dalia, who “studies war only to better enable herself to prevent it”. The product pleased me more than any of my previous novels. The book struck me—and still strikes me—as balanced and intelligent, without losing tension or readability. That it pushes the envelope by portraying in fiction Israeli extremists pleases the iconoclast in me. I knew that some people would be offended by it. That was okay. I wanted to provoke discussion. No intractable situation gets solved without discussion. Along the way, I fell in love with my protagonist, Dalia Artzi, the pacifist military historian who “lives in peace but is always ready for war.” And so for my next novel, I decided to write—and this time finish—my first direct sequel.
Altman’s captivating thriller masterfully examines morality in a time of upheaval…(he) joins the ranks of Vince Flynn and David Baldacci with his engrossing and contemplative spy thriller. —Foreword Reviews Magazine R E A D M O R E O N FA L S E F L A G BUY NOW 37
THE KOREAN WOMAN
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THE KOREAN WOMAN N O R T H K O R E A’ S D E A D L I E S T W E A P O N I S S L E E P E R A G E N T S O N G S U N YO U N G
A hard-as-nails, breathtakingly paced thriller that absolutely could not be more topical. —William Christie, author of A Single Spy Married with children and living the good life in New York City, she has waited seven years to activate the mission she was trained to do: infiltrate America’s financial infrastructure. She prays the call from her handlers will never come, because she loves her husband and kids and affluent New York lifestyle. But the call does come. During volatile negotiations between the White House and Pyongyang, Song is hurled back into a reality she had hoped to leave behind forever. Unbeknownst to her, the CIA has already broken her cover. Working with “retired” Israeli operative Dalia Artzi, they track the Korean agent as she relentlessly executes her mission. Langley is pulling strings behind the scenes, confident of its advantage in this highstakes game—until an unforeseen wild card from within its very ranks hijacks the operation for an unthinkable purpose. Dalia realizes that Song has been the unwitting catalyst for the disaster now unfolding, and that she alone can stop it from engulfing the world. B E H I ND T HE B O O K “You don’t happen to know how to hijack a nuclear missile from the American arsenal, do you?” 39
We were standing on the kindergarten playground, watching our kids climb the jungle gym. The father of my son’s playmate had just told me that he was an astrophysicist working for Princeton university. To my gratified surprise, he thought for a few seconds and then answered, “I could probably come up with something.” By then, I’d been working on The Korean Woman for three months, and was finding myself hitting walls in terms of research. I had chosen for my subject ongoing nuclear brinksmanship between the US and the DPRK. Having tackled Israel in my last book, FALSE FLAG, I wanted a geopolitical conflict that would provide a comparable challenge for my returning heroine, Dalia Artzi. The story concerned an undercover North Korean intelligence agent, a “sleeper” who had burrowed so deep into American society that she was loath to leave behind her new life when activated. And of course, the story involved nuclear weapons—I couldn’t catch the true flavor of what was going on between the US and the DPRK without including nuclear weapons. But these were not easy subjects to research. I’d found bread crumbs to get me started on the right trails…defectors and moles and analysts writing about North Korea, and experts in nuclear arsenals writing about security and lack thereof. But much of what I needed was either too classified, too speculative, or too technical for me. Hence the shot-in-the-dark playground question. Little did I realize how fruitful this line would prove. One advantage of living in Princeton, I learned, is that the parents of my children’s classmates have some pretty interesting jobs…and are often willing to share their expertise. The astrophysicist, a gentleman and a friend, gave freely of his time and expertise. He introduced to me the idea of the quantum computer, then sat me down and patiently walked me through it… again…and again…and again.
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Another parent on the same playground, it turned out, was a Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy. His specialty happened to be missile interception. Of course, he couldn’t tell me anything classified. But he knew which articles to recommend, how to analyze the technical details, and where to go for further research (see HOW TO WRITE CONVINCING SPY FICTION ABOUT HIGHLY CLASSIFIED SUBJECTS). On my daughter’s preschool playground, I found myself talking to an Air Force vet who had sat inside nuclear missile silos, who also gave generously of his time, knowledge, and experience. And so I will always associate playgrounds with The Korean Woman. Largely, no doubt, because an extraordinary run of good luck and coincidence led to my conducting so much valuable research on them. But also because the playground symbolizes the primary conflict of the story—the domestic life that my sleeper agent Song Sun Young has cultivated, which she must leave behind when activated. The Korean Woman brought me back around to where I started with my first book. Both are about young female enemy agents deeply embedded in America, who are activated and sent on missions that endanger life on earth with atomic fire. These two novels bookend my career thus far.
Altman’s depiction of Song’s long-dormant tradecraft shines in this high-adrenaline thriller…a high stakes game of cat-and-mouse. —Booklist R E A D M O R E O N T HE K O R E A N W O M A N BUY NOW
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