SHADOW CELL

A fast-paced account of an effort to root out a mole and recruit double agents in an unnamed enemy nation.

Owing to CIA censorship, the Bustamantes, married former agents, can’t name the country on which this narrative centers. “But we can tell you,” they write, “that it’s a place with centuries of history, a vibrant culture, a wonderful people…and a government implacably opposed to the United States and its allies.” Given that the country would appear to be European and mildly prosperous, one might make an educated guess, but that’s not really important. What is important is that the country they call Falcon had an intelligence service so highly developed that traditional methods of spycraft were hobbled, leading to a brilliant solution: Decentralize their spy network so that it resembled a terrorist cell, with each member holding only need-to-know information. On that score, one of the most exciting episodes in a book full of them is Andrew’s skin-of-his-teeth escape from Falcon after almost certainly having been betrayed by an American agent code-named Scimitar, who did so for the oldest reason there is: He needed money. The adventures and misadventures are plentiful here, but of equally great interest to readers are the authors’ lucid explanations of how spycraft proceeds to begin with. In the business of recruiting well-connected Falconians to spill state secrets, for instance, the first step is to gain the subject’s attention more or less accidentally, and then turn up at the same coffee shop or store and, in time, strike up a conversation. Phrase three? Forge a true friendship, a particularly American approach. “Most of the time, the relationships between our case officers and their Falcon contacts are genuine—not fake or transactional.” It’s just the thing for a budding spy to learn.

A gripping espionage yarn that happily contradicts the authors’ advice for crafting a cover story: “Make it boring as hell.”