A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming

Spying is about waiting.

Jean-Marc Daumal is a well off Tunisian businessman in a dead end marriage. His wife tolerates his transgressions, but their current au pere, a 20yo girl from the UK is different. Jean-Marc and Amelia Wheldon’s affair has gone well beyond an occasional dalliance to genuine affection. One morning, Amelia is just gone leaving a note with her American benefactors, a rich couple who live on a boat and sail the Med. She just wanted to stretch her wings.

Fast forward 30 years. A retired French couple are vacationing near Luxor, Egypt. While strolling on a Nile beach, they are mugged and beaten to death. The next week, an ordinary young accountant of no real note is kidnapped of the streets of Paris.

Amelia Levene's (nee Wheldon) post Tunisian life led her to the British SIS (aka MI6) where she has risen to the point where she leapfrogs a senior level admin-type and accepts the call to be the MI6 chief. But in the weeks prior to her taking over, she suddenly vanishes. She has gone to Paris then to Nice where local assets find her taking a painting class, then she ups and disappears.

Sounds fishy. One of the service’s clandestine heads is worried; off the grid this close to taking over? Can’t ask a current agent to look for her so he contacts an agent who has recently been fired after an incident surrounding the joint UK/US interrogation of a jihadist in Afghanistan.

Tom Kell has been killing time eating take-out food and watching black and white movies on TCM. At times he imagined life outside of the service, but knows he really can’t live any other life. He’s asked to track down Amelia, so he follows her trail through Paris to Nice then to Tunis.

MI6 thinks she must have some fling on the side, but is concerned that maybe she is tying up loose ends with another foreign agency – SIS’s job is to look at all kinds of possibilities.

But the truth that Kell finds is not quite what London was expecting. Kell has to confront Amelia about what he’s learned about her absence and what he thinks is lurking beyond what she has experienced. Indeed, the French DGSE has set up an operation intended to curry influence within MI6 using a secret long buried by Amelia.

I read a back cover blub about another author’s comparison with modern espionage writers like Olen Steinhauer (in my power rotation) and UK's Charles Cumming. I hadn’t heard that name before so I checked out his titles and settled on this 2012 book (it was available at the library). This was espionage at its roots – watching, waiting, surveillance, persuasive interrogation, more surveillance, supposition, more waiting, more watching. None of the high octane shoot-em-up of some stories. Cummings skillfully exposes the highs and lows of the spy life offering characters of depth that the reader can both care about and on some level, identify with.

Yes, I’m glad I read that cover blurb. Also glad that the county library has a number of books by Cumming on the shelf. For me, not on the same level as Steinhauer . . . yet. But this guy is very, very good and worthy of digging deeper into his works.

East Coast Don