When Spies Become Allies

By Stefan Kanfer

Berlin. What a garrison of spies! what a playground for every alchemist, miracle worker and rat-piper that ever took up the cloak.

-- John le Carre, A Perfect Spy

The playground has closed. The garrison is dispersing. And with it is going another dejected group: the spy novelists. The cold war, central theme of espionage thrillers, has melted in the warm sun -- and hot air -- of glasnost and perestroika.

It may be quite a while before writers find an arena as morally complex or financially rewarding. Before World War II, the spy novelist usually took the low road: the hero was implausibly good, as in John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps. Evil was unambiguous. Sax Rohmer invested his villain, Fu Manchu, "with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race . . . the Yellow Peril incarnate." But in the postwar period the public grew weary of caricatures, and only Ian Fleming could profitably drive on the old thoroughfare, with men like Doctor No and Goldfinger in the backseat.

The high road, paved by Graham Greene and improved by John le Carre, led to an entirely new kind of literature. The books no longer echoed of national anthems. Instead they suggested T.S. Eliot's Gerontion: "Think/ Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices/ Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues/ Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes."

In these espionage novels, impudent crimes were committed on both sides of the Berlin Wall. There was a peculiar similarity to the sunless corridors and bureaucratic fatigue of Moscow and Washington. Enemies became interdependent and sometimes indistinguishable; it was a case of the left hand strengthening the right. George Smiley in Britain needed his rival Karla in Moscow. NATO needed the Warsaw Pact. The CIA needed the KGB. And the spy novelists needed them all.

No wonder publishers are so melancholy. "Soviet-U.S. confrontation as a genre is dead," says Viking editor Al Silverman. Adrian Zackheim, executive editor of Morrow, puts the situation in the absolute terms of a bumper sticker: "Espionage is over."

Some acknowledged spy masters have joined the funeral march. "The public won't accept that espionage is still happening," observes novelist Frederick Forsyth (The Day of the Jackal). "The KGB general as the all-purpose bad guy isn't going to work anymore."

For Martin Cruz Smith (Gorky Park), the spy genre has lost its drawing power: "I don't find it as compelling or as credible. We've gone past the epic enemy. Now we're down to the mini-series enemy."

Yet not every writer is willing to mourn the passage of Boris and Natasha. The man who renewed the espionage genre back in 1963, when he brought his spy in from the cold, believes the glass is half full. "If the spy novelist of today can rise to the challenge," claims le Carre, "he has got it made. He can sweep away the cobwebs of a world grown old and cold and weary . . . and take on any number of new hunting grounds."

But where are those grounds? The headlines and back pages suggest a few territories available for exploitation:

EASTERN EUROPE. When a subject grows old enough it becomes new. Long ago, novelists thought they had exhausted the subject of Balkan intrigue. Now that the U.S.S.R. seems destined, in Trotsky's memorable phrase, for the dustbin of history, long-dormant rivalries have been awakened. Once again Romania, Albania, Bulgaria and company provide an exceptional backdrop for enmity and vengeance.

SOUTH AFRICA. Pariah states provide ideal stages for international intrigue -- one reason why Larry Bond's Vortex made the best-seller list. Even with De Klerk's policies and relaxed sanctions, the permutations of black vs. black, black vs. white, white vs. white are endless. Besides, adds Bond, "Afrikaners make good bad guys."

THE MIDDLE EAST. In Joshua and Judges, the Hebrew generals regard spies as standard equipment. Espionage agents have been employed ever since, on both sides of the Negev. Like Saddam Hussein, treachery seems unlikely to go away, and as long as oil remains the fuel of the future, power struggles will provide plots for a thousand sun-and-sand scenarios.

JAPAN. With superpower status has come some super liabilities. The "land of the rising sun" now has its own full-blown financial scandal, and the nation will soon be a focal point of the international thriller. Next March, Viking provides a formidable entry with Henry Meigs' Gate of the Tigers, centered on a Japanese scheme to capture U.S. high-tech secrets.

TECHNOLOGY. In an age of space exploration, robotics and cyborgs, the techno- thriller is only beginning to make its mark. There is no reason to cede all the special effects to Arnold Schwarzenegger; atomic submarines, undetectable aircraft and, of course, the ever popular Ultimate Weapon can and should be vital parts of this novelist's arsenal.

ECOLOGY. The Four Horsemen have been replaced by the Three Ps of the Apocalypse: Predators, Polluters and Poachers. They provide equal-opportunity villainy: everyone is against them, and anyone who fights them is an automatic hero or heroine. Indeed, one eco-thriller, The Covenant of the Flame by David Morrell, centers on an international group out to rid the earth of its despoilers.

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE. The B.C.C.I. affair reverberates on both sides of the Atlantic. A cast of plutocrats and drug runners, politicians and terrorists, should provoke a shelf of thrillers, and when this scandal runs out, there surely will be another money laundry, disguised as a bank, ready to prod the writers' fantasies.

LATIN AMERICA. Nothing has changed. South of the Rio Grande the spy novelist will still find the same ingredients: vibrant village myth, religious ritual, Spanish elegance, exploited minorities, abject poverty and flamboyant wealth. The only problem, says Bond, "is getting the scenarios down on paper before things change. You've got to pick a long-term crisis. You don't want some Banana Republic revolution."

Given these grounds -- and almost every item on Nightline -- it seems much too early to administer Extreme Unction to the international thriller after all. Jason Epstein, editorial director of Random House, is less a cheerleader than a realist when he observes, "Spy novels have survived since the beginning of time. It all began with the Trojan horse."

He concedes that "no one is going to write about the cold war except in a historical work. But writers will think up new standards. The spy novel is not going to go away. There are always going to be spies. There will be spy novels as long as there are people."

What kind of novels does he expect to come across his desk? He counters with another question: "Who can tell what these guys will turn out? It's not predictable. If publishers knew what would turn up, publishing would be a lot easier." An unpredictable life, filled with difficulties? Hmmm. The publishing industry might just be the right locale for a thriller or two . . .

With reporting by Wendy Cole/New York