Quiller Meridian

Quiller Meridian is the 17th installment of the brilliant Quiller series—in my opinion the best spy fiction series of all time. It's now the 1990s; although the Soviet Union has fallen and the Cold War has ended, there are still missions to accomplish, operational excellence to be achieved, and life to be lived on the edge of death. Those have always been what drives Quiller, not the ambitions of the powerful or the causes of fanatics (in fact the latter are Quiller's enemies in this story, as in most others). 

I was particularly interested to read this installment, since it takes place in a setting I'm familiar with. I've actually ridden the Trans-Siberian Express in 1990s, in the dead of winter, and visited some of the cities mentioned in the story. I've experienced the sauna-like heat on the trains, the crowded quarters, the bad food, the good tea, the corrupt employees, the brutal cold and the poor, frozen Siberian villages—which in winter are surely among the bleakest inhabited places on earth.

The story opens in Budapest, where Quiller has been rushed to try to clean up a botched rendezvous with a Russian informant named Zymyanin, who has some kind of critical intelligence to transmit to the Bureau (Quiller's shadowy agency). Unfortunately the meeting was blown, one agent has been decapitated on the train tracks, and the informant has fled to parts unknown. But the thread soon picks up in Moscow, where Zymyanin is boarding the Trans-Siberian train from Moscow to Vladivostok, and Quiller follows him aboard. On board Quiller does his usual tense, hyper-aware tradecraft, and soon discovers that three powerful Russian generals are on the train, along with a beautiful young woman named Tanya who is friendly with one of them. He also discovers Zymyanin, who warns him that the generals are members of the Podpolia—the hard-line underground that wants to end Russia's experiment with democracy and bring back the Soviet Union—and tells him to keep them under close surveillance. Unfortunately, Quiller never learns anything else from the informant, because he is soon found dead in a bathroom with a gunshot to the head. Worse, Quiller has been framed for the killing by one of the general's bodyguards.

From here the story goes into overdrive, as the train car where the generals had been staying is bombed, derailing the train, and Quiller has to escape the authorities who seal off the train and get to safety in the frozen city of Novosobirsk, the most wanted man in Siberia. More classic Quiller tradecraft follows, as he evades surveillance, employs safe houses, and makes contact with his favorite director in the field, Ferris. At this point Quiller has to wing it to continue the mission, which becomes personal after Tanya is taken into custody by the authorities on suspicion of involvement in the killing of one of the generals.

There follows a rather far-fetched gambit by Quiller to free Tanya from the militsiya (police), which seemed too Hollywood and over the top by the usually realistic standards of this series. There are also car chases, killings, and two new key characters are introduced: an unhinged rogue agent who is out for revenge against the generals, and Tanya's brother, a captain in the Russian army, who becomes Quiller's key ally in his mission to discover what the generals are up to and foil their plans. The story races to a climax as Quiller reaches the site of the generals' big meeting, where he uncovers a vast conspiracy to establish a "new world order" that echoes forward to our time. However, the ending seemed a bit rushed and again, a bit unrealistic for this series.

All in all, this was a tense, entertaining, intelligent read, not in the top tier of the series but still highly recommended for all shadow-fiction fans.

Get a copy of Quiller Meridian here.

Dark Deeds

Dark Deeds is an obscure 1982 thriller that I picked up on a whim because it ticked three of my favorite shadow-fiction boxes. It: 1) was published in the early 1980s; 2) features an assassin main character; 3) has mind control as a key plot element. The author, Ken Welsh, doesn't appear to have published much else so the book must not have been too successful--which is unfortunate, because it's a rather interesting and entertaining read.

The story's initial protagonist is a mysterious young man with flowing blonde hair known only as Hailey. He's an assassin who travels around the globe doing wet-work for an even more mysterious and sinister individual known as Zeller. We're introduced to Hailey as he arrives in Malaga to arrange an arms deal for his boss. After arranging the delivery, he calmly disposes of the go-between--in the process making it clear that he is: 1) an emotionless, psychopathic killer; 2) a schizophrenic who struggles to suppress a second personality; and 3) slavishly dedicated to obeying Zeller's orders.

Hailey's next task is to find a fast boat which he and a fellow Zeller operative can hijack in international waters and use to complete the arms transaction. They find a nice yacht in possession of a rich kid name Quinn, who is sailing the Mediterranean with his girlfriend and a tough captain named Teal. The subsequent hijacking results in the death of Quinn's girlfriend, but he and Teal miraculously survive. Having lost their beloved woman and ship, and realizing that no government is particularly interested in solving a crime committed in international waters, both men vow to track down the pirates themselves and administer rough justice.

As the story unfolds, we learn more about Zeller: he's a very rich arms dealer who lives aboard a black yacht called Shadow so he is perpetually in international waters and out of reach of normal law enforcement. We also learn more about Hailey, how he receives periodic hypnotic brainwashing aboard Zeller's ship to keep his other personality at bay and his assassin personality focused and effective.

The drama gets much more epic when Quinn is put in contact with a man named Sanderson--mercenary extraordinaire and veteran of a dozen wars in the world's worst conflict zones. It seems that Sanderson has an old score to settle with Zeller and a detailed plan to do so, but it will require a paramilitary force and lots of money, which Quinn is able rustle up. Sanderson also has a beautiful young daughter named Lena who soon becomes Quinn's new love interest. What follows is an exciting build-up to the climactic confrontation at sea between Sanderson's army and Zeller's well-guarded little armada of yachts. Things are complicated by Hailey's unravelling psyche, Quinn and Lena's relationship, the increasing senility of Zeller, and the mad ambition of Zeller's right-hand man, Tristan.

The action was very good, but the most interesting aspect of this story for me was the mind control angle. Tristan, a genius psychiatrist who survived a concentration camp with Zeller, has developed a technique that combines sensory deprivation tanks with hypnosis to create reliable programmed assassins and terrorists. And he has a big vision, worthy of any supervillain, to use these programmed "psychotrons" to spread chaos in order to grow the Zeller arms business and expand its power. He plans to start in Italy:

Initially I shall build a group of twenty. After psychotronization they will be the deadliest force of urban guerrillas in the world. I shall set them loose in Italian cities to recruit and control terrorist cells. The most susceptible recruit in each cell will, in turn, be reconstructed and he will be sent forth to create his own cell. Within a year I estimate I can have one hundred cells operating throughout six or eight major Italian cities ... When each group is fully armed and correctly motivated by its psychotronized leader--half of the groups motivated toward the far left, the other half toward the far right--I shall launch them against each other. ... Now, also, I shall be seeking to enlist military men, civil servants, extremist politicians, et cetera. They will be programmed to cause further trouble within the rank and file of their fellows ... No matter whether left or right gains control I should have representatives among them, albeit on the first rungs of the ladder of power. This could come to pass within five years. I should have my first psychotrons at cabinet level in government and at board level in defence within ten years. I shall, in effect, be a controlling member of the Italian government. The business possibilities in the arms trade at this point are staggering.

Dark Deeds was a surprisingly enjoyable read, given its total obscurity. It combines the action and fast pace of a Jack Higgins novel with the intriguing ideas of a Len Deighton novel (e.g. The Ipcress File). Highly recommended.

Get a copy of Dark Deeds here. It can be read for free here.

The Ninja

If there's one book I should absolutely love, it's The Ninja by Eric van Lustbader, published in 1980. It was written during my favorite era for thrillers (late 1970s to early 1980s), and features many of my favorite story elements: ninjas, assassins, eastern mysticism, old vendettas and international intrigue. A New York Times bestseller, the novel was one of the early catalysts (along with the films The Octagon and Enter the Ninja) for the "ninja boom" of the 1980s. Though inexplicably never made into a movie (as discussed in this excellent post), it was the first popular portrayal of ninjas in Western literature (with the exception of Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice, which featured them briefly).

The story concerns the trials and tribulations of Nicholas Linnear, son of an American diplomat and a Chinese mother who grew up in post-war Japan. Linnear was trained in martial arts from a young age, his excellence culminating in him becoming the first non-Japanese allowed to train in the most deadly and secret martial art of all: ninjutsu. But after his parents are killed, the mystically-inclined young warrior moves to the alien world of the USA and has to learn the mysterious ways of the West.

As the story opens, Linnear has quit his job as a successful graphic designer living in New York City, feeling burned out and longing to return to the land of his youth. He meets a beautiful rich girl named Justine who arouses his passion and gives him a new focus, but her relationship to her ruthless billionaire industrialist father, Raphael Tomkin, will soon draw him into a deadly web of intrigue. When a co-worker is found murdered in a mysterious manner, poisoned by a weapon that Linnear is able to identify as a ninja shuriken, Linnear's inner shadow warrior begins to awaken. As more people close to Linnear and Tomkin are killed in exotic and brutal fashion, and it becomes clear that both are at the center of a deadly vendetta, Linnear must call upon all his ninja training to survive.

The plot gets increasingly complex from here, as more characters are introduced  and a backstory involving World War II-era Japanese industrialists, corrupt American officials and a grand conspiracy of industrial espionage and revenge plays out on the streets of New York and the corridors of power in the USA and Japan. We meet the evil ninja Saigo responsible for the killings, and the NYC detective Lew Croaker tasked with investigating them--a tough, cynical bastard who isn't afraid to bend the law to do what's right.

This novel features one of the earliest examples of a trope that would become a cliche: Linnear's boyhood rival in the ninja dojo, Saigo, resentful of the half-breed gaijin, grows up to be a sinister "black ninja" and Linnear's deadly arch-enemy. For me Saigo was the clear star of the story. Though an extremely twisted individual, whose vices include pedophilia, sadism, murder, drug use and hypnotic mind control, he has that relentless, amoral, unstoppable quality that makes characters like Parker or the Terminator so compelling. The climactic finale sets the tone for many classic 1980s ninja films, as Saigo hunts his prey up a skyscraper and the two ninjas meet high above the city to settle their score once and for all.

As awesome as all this sounds, I have to admit that the book's execution was somewhat lacking. The main problem is that van Lustbader's writing is excessive: there's too much descriptive detail, too much literary pretension, too many unlikable characters, too many subplots, too much gratuitous sex, too much soap opera melodrama and too much unconvincing mysticism. What should have been a riveting thriller was too often a pretentious slog. If he had stripped out the excess, cutting off at least 100 pages and making this a much tighter story, he might have produced a classic.

If you want to read a thriller with similar elements by a much better writer that doesn't take itself too seriously, try Shibumi by Trevanian. Or, for a stripped-down, pulpier version of the same basic story, try Ninja Master #5: Black Magician, by Wade Barker.

As it is, I still enjoyed The Ninja for the ninja violence, mysticism, intrigue, and dark, Nietzschean sensibility, but I can't give it my highest rating. Recommended for fans of the genre.

Get a copy of The Ninja here.