Olen Steinhauer has been compared with John Le Carre, so when an opening in my reading occurred, I decided to choose Le Carre’s most recent book and put the Steinhauer book I have on hold. I’ve read a couple Le Carre books some time back (Russia House; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), but it’s been so long I couldn’t tell you anything about them. This is set in Hamburg with 3 main players and a whole pile of international security people trying to outmaneuver each other.
Issa is a 20-something Chechen Muslim on the run from a life of neglect and imprisonment. He stows away on a boat to Sweden, hops another to Copenhagen, and then pays a trucker to smuggle him to Hamburg. Apparently, his deceased father, a former Russian Army commander, had managed to collect a sizeable fortune from a life of theft, pillaging, embezzlement, bribery and more. This fortune was placed in a private bank in Hamburg and Issa wants to claim it.
Issa gets to Hamburg and obtains the aid of a legal aid group that specializes in helping immigrants to represent him in his desire to gain citizenship in Germany, access the money, and secure his future. Annabelle is the liberal, backpack carrying, bike riding, do-gooder who takes up his case.
Tommy Brue, a 60yo Scot, is the son of the bank’s founder (where Issa’s father deposited his money) and now the owner of the bank. The bank is on the verge of failure, he first marriage collapsed, is estranged from a now pregnant daughter who lives in California, and his current wife is having an affair and about to jump ship to her lover. A man struggling with his failures has been placed in the epicenter of a multimillion dollar/terrorism case.
Annabelle, as Issa’s lawyer, seeks out Brue to start the process to access the money. Much of what goes on early in the book is trying to confirm that Issa is who he says he is, that his history is as he has stated, and that he is indeed entitled to the money. Not to mention that Tommy is getting attracted to Annabella, Issa wants Annabelle to convert to Islam, and Annabelle is caught in the middle of conflicting emotions over her legal obligations and her fear for Issa’s future.
But, in a post 9/11 world, especially in Hamburg where a number of the 9/11 terrorists planned their attack, any Muslim who manages to enter the country comes under scrutiny. Maybe 3-4 different layers of German security take an interest in Issa. Not to mention that UK security is interested in why a UK citizen is so tied to such a sizable amount of ill-gotten Muslim money ($12.5 million) soon to change hands. Russia has a passing interest is what just might be their money. And the US is lingering in the background as passive observers (yeah, right)
Issa is a devout Muslim and knows the money is dirty according to the Islamic Law. All he wants to do it give the money away to charities that will help Chechen Muslims who were victimized by the Russians and have another charity hold a small sum to finance his goal of medical school. To do so, he wishes to meet a Dr. Abdullah who lives in Hamburg and has a long and visible history of raising money for Muslim charities.
In a very complex meeting of all the security agencies interested in Issa, each group states their case for just how dirty this Dr. Abdullah is. He may be 95% legitimate, but it’s that 5% that everyone is interested in and there are a number of tales about just how money designated for honest Muslim charities gets diverted to support various jihads. Tommy and Annabelle are recruited (as if they had any choice) to put Issa and Abdullah together, select the charities, then set actions into play to trace the money. One level of German security wants to use this knowledge to leverage Abdullah to work for the Germans. Others want to track Issa as they are convinced his history is manufactured and he is some sort of a sleeper. Still others want to put Dr. Abdullah away and send Issa back to Russia.
This all concludes literally in the last 2 pages with an outcome that favors not Tommy, Annabelle, Issa, or Dr. Abdullah. An outcome engineered by the US without any agreement with the other agencies. They just do it, leaving everyone else, figuratively speaking, holding their arms out in a “what the hell just happened?” posture.
If you’ve never read Le Carre, this is espionage at it’s finest. Very talk-y with minimal ‘action’ of the Vince Flynn or Tom Clancy style of thriller. No body count here, just lots of detail. Who is telling the truth and who is lying; who is manipulating whom, what of a multitude of outcomes is likely to happen (and the one that happened isn’t what I thought was going to occur)?
Is the end satisfying? If you like a story to be tied up nice and neat in a bow, then maybe not. But if the end just might be what really goes on the world of espionage, then absolutely.
Now that I"m going Kindle 2, I was disappointed that this is not in the on-line library yet, but some of his other books are, so I'll start there. I actually searched the Kindle library and three libraries that are associated with Sony, and this book was not on any of them. Too bad, but I can wait.
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