THE QUEEN OF INTELLIGENCE

A CIA–fueled novel stars an unlikely hero.

Sherry Aspen is from Vermont. In the year 2000, her life seems set. She is about to graduate from Georgetown; she intends to go to medical school to become a pediatrician; and she will marry her wealthy boyfriend who will one day turn into a powerful politician. Sherry’s plans go awry when her boyfriend cheats on her. The relationship ends and she returns to Vermont. But her father is not pleased with her decision to come home, and Sherry is soon sent back to the Washington, D.C., area. She is broke and desperate but not without hope. After a brief stint as a law firm receptionist, she is recruited by the CIA and is soon undergoing rigorous training with other inductees. By the end of it, “the Company made her such that she could ground nails between her molars and swallow them.” It is just the beginning of this unassuming young woman’s remarkable odyssey. The deputy of intelligence at the CIA wants her to work in Black Ops in Afghanistan. As Sherry learned during her CIA training, terrorists in the Middle East are posing a national security threat. They are led by a man named Osama bin Laden, whose ethos comes from the teachings of Sayyid Qutb. Extremists like bin Laden are “willing to die for a borderless Islamic world.” It will take people like Sherry who are willing to die to stop them. She is sent to Afghanistan with a paramilitary team to journey across the country, “moving from village to village to collect intelligence on terrorist cells operating in these areas.” It is just one of many perilous missions to come.

It takes quite a few pages for the protagonist to really begin her adventures. Before Sherry is let loose in the espionage world, there is much for the audience to wade through. Readers learn about everything from details about the bigoted CIA director and Sherry’s experiences with skiing to a lengthy chapter about a bullied CIA analyst who kills himself. It is a long, verbose haul. Not all of the details prove tremendously relevant. Items such as the CIA director’s love of grape leaves and how, at a law firm party, “paralegals looked stunning, and the older men were both handsome and wealthy” do not add much substance. Yet there is still plenty of intriguing material to be found in Havel’s tale. Outb’s religious philosophy is explained to Sherry in an enlightening way. Some finer points of conflict, including how Pashtuns “wanted the Taliban to stop the corruption of Tajik and Uzbek leaders and to restore law and order in a country where mass killing was a daily way of life,” help explain Middle East relations in a digestible manner. What’s more, Sherry’s path is not what readers would expect from a typical thriller. She really is willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill her mission, no matter how degrading. She makes moves and travels to places that prove unexpected. Her final destination could hardly have been predicted at the outset. It may take nearly 400 pages to get her into this dangerous world, but once she’s there, geopolitical events could take her just about anywhere. 

A surprising and engrossing international terrorist thriller.