Avenger
by Frederick Forsyth
Bantam Press R155
The end of the Cold War, we were told, spelled the end of the spy thriller.
Not so. Osama bin Laden didn't get the message of eternal peace, and thus presented writers with a whole new set of villains.
Freddie Forsyth's been around a long time and, unlike Tom Clancy, he hasn't got tired. His imagination is as vivid as ever, while his research takes him down devious alleys to piece together the bigger picture.
Here he brings together Canadian pilots in the Battle of Britain, "tunnel rats" in Vietnam, a young and idealistic aid worker's murder in Bosnia, and the hunt for Bin Laden in the months preceding 9/11. And it works.
His themes include the contradictions between public and private justice; between the means and the end.
Cal Dexter is one of two ex-tunnel rats central to this story. He's one of that incredible band whose relatively few members fought a solitary war through the maze of tunnels which honeycombed South Vietnam, providing refuge and escape routes for the Vietcong.
Now, many years later, Dexter's a small-town lawyer with a passion for physical fitness. And once in a while he locks up and leaves to pursue the claims of natural - as opposed to institutional - justice. In this case, tracking down offenders where even the American law system can't - or won't - reach.
His target this time is a former Serbian warlord-turned-arms dealer, living in comfortable, protected South American exile. In 1995 Zoran Zilic killed a young Western aid worker who got in the way of some casual "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia.
Now Zilic has moved on to the stage where he has the potential to become a conduit to Bin Laden - then as now, right at the top of America's hit list. (Although Forsyth, with devastating irony, does point out that there was an occasion when the Sudanese government, wearying of its turbulent guest, offered Bin Laden to Washington...and was told: "Thanks, but no thanks.")
Zilic, the lesser target (warlord/murderer), is being protected by the CIA in the hope of getting to the greater target, Bin Laden. Even though the FBI wants Zilic hunted down and brought back to face trial for the murder of an American citizen.
Here we meet a little-known development in US law, through which that country has assumed the right to pursue serious offenders to the ends of the earth.
In the past, if a US citizen was murdered overseas, Washington presumed the host country would do something about it. If not, tough.
Quoted here is the FBI's top terrorist-hunter O'Neill: "From now on, host country approval has got jack shit to do with it." Ironically, in real life O'Neill was one of the 2 807 to die in the World Trade Center attack, but his spirit lives on.
America's updating of the Civis Romanus sum doctrine is not universally popular, among either dysfunctional states, congenital America-haters, or the chattering classes of "old" Europe.
A British ally explains it well to Paul Devereaux, the Jesuit-educated CIA terrorist-hunter who is one of Avenger's protagonists. "The hatred of your country is not because it attacks theirs, but because it keeps theirs safe."
The US is the sole superpower. "Once the Romans had that dubious honour. They had responded to the hatred with ruthless force of arms. A hundred years ago the British Empire had been the rooster. They had responded to the hatred with languid contempt. Now the Americans had it, and they racked their consciences to ask where they had gone wrong."
Thankfully, not all Americans. This is a thriller about the sort of American who believes in right and wrong, rather than moral relativism. Forsyth piles on the complications and poses the tricky questions, but there's no John le Carré-style equivocation.
Let's have more like this, please.