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July 2, 2010
Phone home, John le Carré — all is forgiven.
In recent years, the British novelist and acknowledged master of the Cold War spy thriller has seemed typically prolific but topically adrift, obliged by changing geo-political realities to look beyond the post-war conflict between the Soviet Union and the West to locate the plots of his books.
After all, the Cold War — like the Soviet Union — has been history for nearly 20 years, at least officially.
And so le Carré has been forced to set his recent novels in diverse locations ranging from Panama in the 1990s to the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the first decade of the new millennium — fine books, all.
But we miss the sorrows of secret agent George Smiley, not to mention all those dark intrigues hatched and nurtured in the dreariest corners of the Kremlin.
And now the good news is — they’re back!
With the arrest of 10 alleged Russian spies in the United States this week — and the sensational escape of yet another in Cyprus — it is patently obvious that the glory days of stolen identities, forged passports, encrypted messages written in invisible ink, code books, dead-letter drops, and all the other classic techniques of clandestine tradecraft are as pertinent to the contemporary world as they were to the gloomiest depths of the Cold War.
So, forget all that loose, premature talk we’ve been hearing about new thinking in Red Square or the onset — yet again — of close working relations between Moscow and Washington.
It isn’t true.
The truth is vastly darker, it’s much more intriguing, and it consists of deep-seated mutual suspicion and spies, spies, spies.
“This was a very systematic, very expensive, long-term operation that reflects a profound mistrust of the West,” says Aurel Braun of the University of Toronto, whose latest book is entitled NATO-Russia Relations in the Twenty-First Century. “The reality is, the Russians haven’t changed policy.”
Instead, they’ve assumed false Canadian names and identities.
Take, for example, Donald Howard Graham Heathfield, the name used by one of the suspected Russian agents detained this week, a man who had long posed as a resident of Boston, an upstanding citizen employed by Global Partners Inc., a business services firm.
In fact, however, the moniker was stolen from an infant in Montreal, who died in his crib some 47 years ago, never suspecting that his illicit namesake would one day be standing in a Boston courtroom facing charges of espionage.
In all, four of the 11 alleged Russian spies arrested this week in the United States and Cyprus were using false Canadian identities. The other three went by the names Tracey Lee Ann Foley, Christopher R. Metsos and Patricia Mills.
It was Metsos — the suspected paymaster of the operation — who flew the coop in Cyprus after having been released on bail.
So, is the Cold War still in effect? Has nothing whatever changed? Has former Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev returned from the dead? Is the world about to end?
No. Yes. No. And, with any luck, no.
“Russia is not a superpower, and this is not the Cold War,” says Braun. “But it is disturbing.”
By Oakland Ross. Continue reading this story online at thestar.com.