Review
Author: David McCloskey
Reviewed by: Thomas C. Hudnut
Issue: December 2023
A former CIA analyst himself, David McCloskey invests this novel with enough shop-talk, historical references, Arabic words and phrases, and intimate knowledge of the Middle East to make it ring absolutely true. In it we encounter the lethal venality of Syria's President Assad, the behind-the-scenes machinations of Vladimir Putin, the cold-blooded brutality of the mukhabarat (Syria's answer to Hitler's Brown Shirts), and the whose-side-am-I-on-now? mentality of the average Syrian. CIA agent Samuel Joseph has been here before, his most recent mission a failure in which his partner was abducted and subsequently murdered. Sent back to recruit a high-up official in Assad's government but also, in his own mind, to avenge his partner's death, Sam's work begins in Paris, where he has been sent by his Station Chief to recruit someone who works in "the Palace...effectively [the President's] personal office, including his senior advisers and liaisons to all the big government agencies." That someone turns out to be Mariam Haddad, a 32-year-old Syrian Christian whose late mother had been a diplomat serving in Paris and whose father is commander of the Syrian Army III Corps in Aleppo - "a real daughter of the regime, "Sam is told. "You need a family like that to get a job in the Palace." Sam's recruitment efforts go well, too well, in fact. In violation of one of the Agency's most inviolable rules, he becomes romantically involved with Mariam and thereafter the plot proverbially thickens. Mariam's spying is inevitably made more difficult, if not compromised entirely, by the threat the government holds over her cousin Razan, an outspoken opponent of the regime who has been blinded in one eye when clubbed by a mukhabarat during a demonstration and who is now subject to arrest at any time. Through her discovery of the Syrian regime's lethal use of sarin gas on its own citizens and intention to use more, Mariam makes a major contribution to American intelligence efforts. But such efforts always come at a price and Mariam's contacts with Sam are increasingly frustrated as it becomes clear there is a mole in the government and the state security apparatus is determined to find out who it is. As the noose tightens around them, the suspense turns this book into a real page-turner. With doses of violence, danger, and romance, McCloskey has written a terrific spy story. The reader comes away with a very real sense of life inside Syria during its endless civil war, amazement at the depravity of the regime, and astonishment at the resilience of its opponents. A sign held by demonstrators in Abbassin Square sums up the story: "Freedom starts at birth. In Syria, it starts at death."