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.

Quiller Solitaire

The early 1990s was a challenging time for espionage thriller writers. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, it was difficult to find adversaries that were both convincing and menacing enough to make dramatic villains. China was not yet ready for prime-time as the West's new arch-rival, drug lords weren't sufficiently organized or ideological, Third Reich holdovers were too long in the tooth, KGB-sponsored terrorism of previous decades had died down, Islamic terrorists hadn't yet struck hard, Russian gangsters hadn't yet emerged as a new bogeyman, and sinister corporate overlords struck too close to home. Was the era of the super-spy over?

Apparently not. In Quiller Solitaire, the 16th installment of the Quiller series published in 1992, author Elleston Trevor (aka Adam Hall) manages to weave a compelling mission for Quiller in the post-Cold War era that involves a Red Army Faction splinter group, ex-Stasi officers, Islamists and a terrorist plot that looks rather prescient given the Bojinka plot and the 9/11 attacks of the decade to come.

As the novel opens, Quiller is being debriefed about the death of a fellow Bureau agent who was incinerated when his car was run off the road and exploded. Quiller, who was following the agent to his rendezvous, witnessed the crash and now feels guilty about the death and obligated to avenge it. The agent had been investigating the murder of a diplomat in Berlin by suspected terrorists of the German Red Army Faction, and now Quiller is sent in to investigate both murders. Quiller learns that a group called "Nemesis" is planning a imminent terrorist attack using a commercial airliner, possibly inspired by the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, where a bomb aboard a Pan Am flight exploded over Scotland, killing 270 people. Desperate to stop the plot, Quiller goes in alone, posing as an international arms dealer and dangling a deadly carrot in front of the Nemesis leader in hopes of luring him out and destroying the organization.

Like most novels in this series, a large chunk of the narrative consists of Quiller attempting to surveil and avoid surveillance by enemy operatives, both on foot and in automobiles (he's an expert driver), his stream-of-consciousness calculations punctuated by short, sharp hand-to-hand encounters (he's also a lethal martial artist). Quiller novels are "spy procedurals" in much the same way Parker novels are "thief procedurals": we get a detailed look inside the world of a very focused and disciplined shadow operator, see how he plans his operations, seizes opportunities, neutralizes threats and moves relentlessly forward to complete his missions despite the inevitable f*k-ups, plot twists and enemy actions.

Also typical for this series, in the last third of the book the action really heats up, as Quiller learns more details about the plot and takes desperate measures to stop it. Operating deep undercover, cut off from Bureau directors, he has to fly by the seat of his pants and gamble his life on an apparently suicidal mission. Things get increasingly eerie as the enemy plot begins to resemble 9/11; was Kalid Sheikh Mohammed a fan of the series? The highlight of the story for me was an airdrop into the depths of the Sahara desert by an exhausted Quiller, as he penetrates to the heart of the Nemesis operation and moves toward the cliff-hanging airborne climax.

Quiller Solitaire is one of my favorite entries in a series that is one of the masterworks of the spy fiction genre. 27 years and 16 books into the series, there is no sign of any decline in quality and the stories remain as riveting as ever, even as the Cold War that spawned Quiller is history.

Get a copy of Quiller Solitaire here.