The Amateur Spy
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Synopsis
Burned out by years of humanitarian-aid work, Freeman and Mila Lockhart have retreated to an idyllic Greek island. But on the first night of their new life they are surprised by three intruders who seem to know everything about Freeman - including a haunting secret he has long kept from Mila. They use it to blackmail him into spying on an old Palestinian friend in Jordan. Overnight, Freeman is plunged into the maelstrom of the Middle East and is quickly in over his head.
In suburban Washington, D.C., meanwhile, a prosperous Palestinian-American couple, Abbas and Aliyah Rahim, are still grieving for their daughter, accidentally killed while vacationing abroad. Abbas, a surgeon whose patients number among the nation's elite, blames her death on the bureaucratic machinations of overly suspicious officials. Aliyah fears he may be reeling toward fanaticism, and her efforts to avert this take her to Jordan. Like Freeman, she is soon overwhelmed by the region's dangerous passions and complexities.
As their paths converge, Freeman and Aliyah - both desperately worried about the loved ones they left behind - must swiftly separate fact from illusion, enemy from friend. The consequences of failure could be catastrophic. . . .
Release date: March 4, 2008
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
Print pages: 336
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The Amateur Spy
Dan Fesperman
“No, no. Everyone should be so bloody lucky. Give me a place in these isles and I’d quit in a fuckin’ minute.”Quit was the word for it, all right. But reborn, too. At least, that was the plan. Time to stand tall in the front lines of self-sufficiency, with a fishing rod in one hand and a shotgun for hunting in the other, while Mila tended to orchard and garden. Henceforth, any bread we tossed upon the waters would be for our own mouths. Let the next disaster proceed without us, because our former selves were finished, dismantled.Our new hopes were thanks mostly to Mila. She was thirty-seven, a Bosnian whom I met in ’92 during her country’s civil war. We were living and working in besieged Sarajevo then, a time when the fates seemed to be conspiring against her and her country. I was fortunate enough to be able to help her survive the experience in one piece, both physically and emotionally, and when the war ended she was ready to go with me anywhere as long as it got her out of there for good. The UN, far more nimble at accommodating unofficial requests than official ones, obliged our wishes to travel in tandem even though we weren’t yet married, and for several years running we were island hoppers of African famine for the World Food Programme. Mila viewed each stop as yet another chance to remake the planet in a better image, even as she was repairing her own damage. We have always been quick to rise to the defense of ideals. It’s one thing that made us such a good match, although she has always been the more tactful practitioner. Cross a line into dangerous misconduct and we will both draw it to your attention, but her gentler voice will be the one you want to heed. I have given some thought to why my tone is more cynical and strident, and I’ve decided it is due to my higher rank in the aid bureaucracy, which afforded a better view of the way things really work. Lucky her. “Pretty, isn’t it?” The Scotsman pointed back toward Argos, receding in our wake. I nodded to be friendly, but I had never liked the look of Argos. Too barren. Too brown and imposing. In the afternoon light the villages protruded from its ridgelines like bones through rotting flesh, and I was unable to suppress a shudder.“If you think this water’s cold,” the grinning Scotsman said, “then don’t ever take a dip in the North Sea.”“Good advice. Excuse me. I should go find my wife.”It must have been around then that Mila noticed the three men. She told me later that after a second purging she felt well enough to head back inside, where she cleaned up using sterile wipes that I’d pilfered the last day on the job. While doing so she idly surveyed the aisles of passengers.They were together on the back row. What caught her attention was that none of the three appeared to be either a Greek or a vacationer. Karos wasn’t exactly a business destination, yet their attire of smart slacks and button-down oxford shirts was trademark business casual. Each had a single overnight bag close at hand. It was almost as if they had come straight from Wall Street. She said there was also something odd about the way they were clumped together, like wagons circled for protection. Most of the other passengers paraded to and fro, visiting the snack bar or the wildness of the deck.No sooner had these thoughts crossed her mind than another wave of nausea sent her running for the stern. A half hour later we were within sight of Karos, and by the time we boarded a taxi for the ride to our house she had rediscovered her smile and forgotten the men on the back row.Our spirits lifted as the taxi climbed into the hills. The soft island air rushing through the open windows made it easy to focus on renewal and relaxation.Karos is neither the prettiest nor the ugliest, the barest nor the lushest, the most cosmopolitan nor the most rustic of the Cyclades. Photographers in search of the most stunning expressions of Aegean charm almost never go there, yet it boasts a brooding monastery atop its highest mountain, a walled medieval town that clings to a coastal bluff like a barnacle, and terraced green hillsides where goats wander among olive trees and pine groves. The domes of Orthodox chapels, many long abandoned, sprout in almost every valley like sky-blue mushrooms.In the past few years the island has been “discovered” by one of the popular guidebooks, and it now draws a fair share of tourists during the high season. One of the better results of this boomlet is some new nightlife in the port town of Emborios, where a string of tavernas and ouzeris curls along a shingle beach. But the island’s twenty square miles of hill and dale still offer plenty of hiding places, and at night Karos sinks easily into slumber, save for the owls.Our house is near the southern tip, about a six-mile drive from Emborios. It is fifteen years old–practically brand-new by local standards–and is fairly small, with six whitewashed rooms. Large windows capture the sunlight when the shutters are thrown open, and a cistern in the back collects rain from the roof tiles. Best of all, there is a fieldstone patio with a trellised grape arbor overhead and a commanding view of the sea, which is a mere hundred yards away down a gentle slope of grass and stone. We bought the place two years ago, just before real estate prices went through the roof, and just as we began contemplating how we wanted to spend the balance of our lives.I hadn’t always craved this sort of getaway. For several years, in fact, I resisted the idea of marrying Mila, mostly because I resisted her idea of what our lives should be like in retirement. She wanted seclusion, a safe harbor where no one could reach her. A castle surrounded by a moat would have been just fine. I favored the idea of heading off to a vibrant city in the thick of the action, some capital of high culture in a healthy land of plenty where I could sample all I had missed during our years amid need. But year by year, as stresses mounted and the lines of starvation lengthened, Mila gradually won me over to her way of thinking. I also wasn’t blind to one of the other key virtues of seclusion: Surrounding Mila with her cherished moat would seal her away from other men. It is the perennial concern of the older lover, I suppose, even though the eighteen years between us had mattered little up to now. I confess to being relieved when she turned thirty. It was as if she had finally crossed some invisible line of safety, and from then on would be less likely to stray. Not that she had ever shown signs of doing so.Like many Balkan women, Mila carries herself with more dignity and composure than the region’s menfolk, who by and large seemed either surly or downtrodden throughout the war. This resilience is one of the qualities I treasure most in her. It lends a sturdiness to her delicate beauty, and a pleasing gravity to her wit and intelligence. It is her emotional ballast, and I would do anything to protect it.
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