The Whitehall Mandarin by Edward Wilson

review by Maryom

William Catesby is on the trail of a spy again - this time someone highly placed in Whitehall. His superiors learn, through a mole inside the KGB,  that a Soviet spy ring is no longer sending information back to Russia but on to its communist rival China, and that someone high in the British government hierarchy is providing that information. Catesby has a hunch about the informant but where can he find the evidence to back it? Why would a high ranking civil servant 'turn' and spy for another country - ideology, dark hidden secrets worth a spot of blackmail or just for the money?
It's not an easy task and a story that starts in the late 1950s burns on a slow fuse through the sex scandals of London in the swinging sixties to its end in war-torn Vietnam.

The Whitehall Mandarin is another excellent convoluted maze of an espionage thriller from Edward Wilson. With his trademark of wrapping of a story around historical facts, the story is littered with references to real events and people, such as the Profumo scandal, Kennedy assassination and double-agent Oleg Penkovsky, blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. Don't think this is a dry recitation of facts though - it's a gripping story full of subterfuge, lies and double, and triple, crossings; so much so that at times I felt I should have been keeping notes to remind me who I thought was on which 'side', who was lying to whom, and which people knew they were being lied to and using that for their advantage!
The setting moves from the bleak Suffolk marshes, via the offices of Whitehall and decadent society parties to the jungles of Vietnam, but it isn't really an action-packed story of high speed chases and gunfights, more on the lines of Le Carré's Smiley stories.

It seems a little odd to tag this as historical fiction  - after all I can vaguely remember some of the events - but it's surprising how long ago some of these events took place.

Maryom's review -  4.5 stars
Publisher - Arcadia Books
Genre - Adult Spy Thriller, Historical Fiction

Buy The Whitehall Mandarin from Amazon

Edward Wilson - Author Interview

Having met Edward Wilson at Edinburgh International Book Festival this year and invited him to make a guest post for the anniversary of the Cuban incident, and reviewed his book The Midwinter Swimmer he kindly agreed to an author interview as Maryom felt she had many questions she'd like to ask...  

You seem to have come to writing in a roundabout sort of way. Was it something you'd always wanted to do or did it grow out of your experiences?
I became fascinated by writers and artists when I was growing up. They seemed so much more interesting than everyone else. I wanted to be part of their world, to be like them. I also had two great English teachers – Mr Jansen and Mr Newton. Jansen used to say outrageous things that would get most teachers sacked, but loved books. Newton dressed like a dandy – and I’m sure had a secret life that had to be secret. When, however, I got to university I found the Eng Lit department dull. But the International Relations faculty absolutely glittered. The lecturers came from all corners of the world and reeked of embassy cocktail parties and intrigue. In retrospect, I can see that many of them had been spies. I was intoxicated by the cosmopolitan air and the whiff of power. I had a romantic image of my future self striding around in a white linen suit as a diplomat in dangerous tropical places. I soon ended up in one, but wearing an olive drab uniform instead of white linen. Any illusions I had were stripped away in Vietnam. I had volunteered because I wanted to see what it was like to be in a war, even though I knew that war was wrong. My other feeble excuse is that I was researching my first novel. In fact, I wrote much of A River in May in a bunker at the remote outpost of Nong Son. When I came back I was a bit disorientated. I drifted around – Canada, Germany, France, Scotland – and somehow picked up an MA in English Literature. After Vietnam, there was no way I was ever going to live in the USA again. I finally settled in England and spent 30 years as a teacher of English and modern languages. So I don’t really think I came to writing in such a roundabout way. And yes, experiences are an important part of my writing, but you need to swathe experiences with layers of imagination, not to falsify or exaggerate, but to find a more intense truth.  

What drew you to spy-fiction? Was it merely the action-adventure side of it? (I was particularly interested at Edinburgh about your comments on betrayal in literature)
My first novel, A River in May, had been shortlisted for the British Commonwealth Prize and I wanted to continue writing purely literary fiction. My decision to try spy fiction was the result of a visit to the former AWRE, Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, site at Orford Ness. I had sailed past it for years, but had never visited the place. It seemed too spooky. Then one day a couple of ex-colleagues got me to go there. One of them suggested we write a book about it. I tried, but I’m not good at working with others. I continued on my own. The bleak shingle spit of Orford Ness and the weathered ruins of its nuclear testing facilities became for me a melancholy symbol. I say symbol rather than metaphor because symbols cannot be clearly defined. For me, Orford Ness became a feeling as well as place. I like bleakness and grey skies. My idea of hell is California and perfect teeth. In any case, I quickly discovered that spy fiction suited me. There is nothing more important to post-war British intelligence and foreign policy than the ‘special relationship’. You can’t write spy fiction about the period without focussing on that relationship – and the fact that I can write as both a Briton and an American is a great advantage.

The big theme that links spy fiction to great literature is betrayal. Homer, Shakespeare and Dante are all about betrayal. And the worst betrayal is hurting someone who loves you – in my view, far worse than betraying your country. Having said that, there are situations where you may have to betray the person who loves you. In The Darkling Spy Catesby sacrifices Petra, the love of his life. He didn’t know that she would die, but he put her in harm’s way for reasons of state – and maybe peace. The complexities of the heart are impossible to unravel. Another form of betrayal is betraying yourself – your own values and beliefs. We all have to make compromises – one, for me. was wearing a tie to job interviews – but when do those compromises become selling out? Catesby – a working class socialist – is always asking himself that question.

I like action and adventure, but only if they create tension. I don’t like gadgets, fast cars and explosions. I prefer standard spy-craft techniques – surveillance, covert identities, dead drops, evasion – for creating dramatic situations. The simple question – ‘Am I being followed?’ – is a great method for ramping up tension. I use violence very sparingly. The fear of violence is a more effective narrative technique than the violence itself. When violence is used, it must be realistic. And afterwards, it’s important that the people involved are scarred by the trauma – unlike James Bond. But people, like Bond, sometimes protect themselves from the trauma of violence by being jokey about it. It may look insensitive, but portraying dark humour in the midst of horror can be realistic.  

Your novels are set in the Cold War of the 1960s against real historical backgrounds. Is there a particular reason for this?
The mid-50s to the mid-60s was the most dangerous decade in British history because the Americans could have launched a pre-emptive strike against the Soviet Union with relatively little danger of Soviet retaliation. The very reason that Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba was because there were few, if any, missiles in Russia that could reach the USA – but there were hundreds that could reach the UK. At the time many in the Pentagon regarded Britain and Western Europe as sacrificial pawns. That uncomfortable historical fact is still the unmentionable elephant in the ‘special relationship’. As a novelist, I like to examine people in extreme situations – and what situation could be more extreme than the risk of nuclear obliteration?

Do you think modern-day readers have anything to learn from this period of history?
I hope modern-day readers will realise that governments lied about the Cold War and they are still lying about the threats facing us now. And the easiest thing for governments to lie about is secret intelligence. A few years ago three retired generals wrote to The Times to say that our Trident nuclear deterrent is completely useless. But no government will ever get rid of Trident for domestic political reasons – they are afraid of looking ‘weak’. Kennedy behaved the same way during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I met JFK as a teenager. And he was every bit as glam and charismatic as the legend. But during the missile crisis, Kennedy put his re-election prospects before our lives. In the end, it was Khrushchev who realised that someone had to be an adult and it was down to him. Khrushchev sacrificed his career – and almost his life – by backing down.

Are they maybe in danger of forgetting how close we came to nuclear war?
Absolutely. There are now four times as many nuclear warheads as existed at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even though the brakes on the nuclear car have failed several times, the nuclear car still hasn’t crashed. Our extraordinary run of good luck has made most people complacent. By the way, I have to remember that writing novels is not the same as debating about nuclear disarmament. Fictional characters must always be complex human beings with human needs and weaknesses. Living as a spy under the shadow of a nuclear apocalypse doesn’t mean that spy doesn’t need love and comfort; doesn’t appreciate a glass of wine and a good poem – or at least the memory of these things.

How much research do you have to do and can it take longer than the actual story writing?
I do most of my research while I’m actually writing – and it doesn’t take longer than the writing itself.  As the characters and plot develop, I look up things to verify the facts and often to enhance the narrative. My discovering that the British diplomatic bag from Cuba to Washington was used to supply Kennedy with embargoed Havana cigars was a priceless gem. But the most important subjects of research are characters. I spend a lot of time watching Youtube clips of them and listening to their voices. I want to see their souls – and their deceptions. Kim Philby was the coldest character I ever studied, Che the warmest. I was taken in by Jack Kennedy when I met him, but after watching news footage of him I began to see that he was a very wooden character – and shallow. The most important thing about using research is hiding the fact that you’ve done it. The bits you’ve researched and the bits you’ve imagined should fit seamlessly together so that the reader can’t detect the stitching.
 
We would like to thank Edward for taking the time out from his busy schedule to answer our questions.

The Midnight Swimmer by Edward Wilson

 review by Maryom

William Catesby is a British spy caught up in the Cold War of the early 1960s. The US is planning an invasion of Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castro's revolutionary government; the Russians are deploying soldiers and nuclear armaments there to support Castro - but if WW3 breaks out one of the first casualties will be Britain!. How can either side back down without total loss of face?  Catesby is sent to Berlin, to Cuba, to Washington in an increasingly desperate attempt to avert the seemingly inevitable. As these events play out on the world stage, Catesby finds himself caught up in a love-triangle with a beautiful Russian.

The Midnight Swimmer is a great espionage story set against a real, very frightening backdrop. Of course we all know now how things worked out but this is one of the few novels I've read that really capture the feeling of tension and fear of the time. Fiction and non-fiction merge easily though Catesby does seem to be just a little too much always where the action is. It has everything you would expect from the spy genre - exotic locations, secret assignations, honey-traps and men torn between personal and patriotic ties.

I must admit I hadn't come across Edward Wilson's novels before being invited to his event at Edinburgh International Book Festival where he was talking about historical espionage fiction. What he said there intrigued me enough to track down this, his latest book, through my library - and now I'll be asking them for more!

For more historical background - and an extract from The Midnight Swimmer - see this previous post by Edward Wilson

Maryom's review -  4.5 stars
Publisher - Arcadia Books
Genre - Adult Spy Thriller, Historical Fiction

Buy Midnight Swimmer, The from Amazon

Edward Wilson - author contribution

Vasili Arkhipov

Tonight (Tuesday 25th September 2012) on Channel 5 is a programme called "Revealed: The Man Who Stopped WW3". While this revelation will be news to many it's already 'revealed' in "The Midwinter Swimmer" a novel by Edward Wilson. Having heard Wilson talking at Edinburgh International Book Festival about this moment in history, we invited him to make a contribution to the blog today ahead of the screening.

We are planning an interview with Edward Wilson very soon and are grateful for this contribution today.

The Man Who Saved the World
(an extract adapted from an article commissioned by The Guardian)
Copyright © Edward Wilson 2012

If you were born before the 27th of October 1962, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov saved your life. It was the darkest day of Cuban Missile Crisis and the most dangerous day in history. An American spy plane had just been shot down over Cuba while another U2 had got lost and strayed into Soviet airspace. As these dramas ratcheted tensions beyond breaking point, an American destroyer, the USS Beale, began to drop depth charges on the B-59, a Soviet submarine armed with a nuclear weapon. They were only ‘practice’ depth charges, but the captain of the B-59, Valentin Savitsky, had no way of knowing that. Nor did he know that the depth charges were merely warning shots to force the B-59 to surface and make her intentions known. The Beale was soon joined by other US destroyers who piled in to pummel the submerged B-59 with more depth charges and hand grenades. The exhausted Savitsky was now under more stress than any commanding officer in the history of warfare. Savitsky assumed that World War III had broken out. He ordered the B-59’s ten kiloton nuclear torpedo to be prepared for firing. Its target was the USS Randolf, the giant aircraft carrier leading the task force.

If the B-59’s torpedo had vaporised the Randolf, the nuclear clouds would soon have spread from sea to land. The armed forces of both super powers would have slipped their leads and no restraining order from the White House or the Kremlin would have reined them in. The first targets would have been Moscow, London, the airbases of East Anglia and troop concentrations in West and East Germany. The next wave of bombs would have wiped out ‘economic’ targets, a euphemism for civilian populations. Square Leg, the 1980 defence exercise, estimated UK casualties from a ‘limited’ nuclear attack of 131 warheads at 29 million dead with only one third of the population surviving ‘short term’. The US war plan – known as SIOP, Single Integrated Operational Plan – echoed Dr Strangelove’s orgiastic Götterdämmerung and called for the dispatch of 5,500 nuclear weapons against a thousand targets including Albania and China.

The world was saved because one Soviet naval officer, Commander Vasili Arkhipov, succeeded in reversing Captain Savitsky’s lethal decision. The regulations for launching the nuclear torpedo required the consent of all three senior officers. There was a heated argument in the submarine’s command centre. Arkhipov was the only officer who opposed launching the torpedo that would have ignited World War III. No one will ever know exactly what transpired between the three officers who held the world’s fate in their hands. But in the end, Arkhipov persuaded his colleagues not to launch and to surface under cover of darkness so they could make radio contact with Moscow. It is clear that Arkhipov’s judgement and reputation – the previous year Arkhipov had risked his life to save a submarine with an overheating reactor – were key factors. 

Never before have so many owed so much to one person. On the evening of 27 October let’s raise our glasses: ‘Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, spasiba!’ Or simply, ‘Thank you, Vasya.’

Extract from The Midnight Swimmer by Edward Wilson
Copyright © Edward Wilson 2012 

Now hear this: general quarters, general quarters. All hands man their battle stations. This is not a drill!
      The USS Beale had scented its prey, pursued her and now had her cornered. The Beale was one of eleven destroyers in Task Force Randolf that were stalking Soviet submarines. The ship’s call to battle was a deafening combination of sirens, klaxons and bells. Several sailors held their ears as they dashed along the decks to their stations.
      The Beale’s weapons officer and skipper were staring at the green sonar screen which showed the depth and location of the target. The sonar operator was wearing earphones. ‘She’s so close, sir, you can hear the propellers and the engine clanking.’
       The skipper spoke first. ‘The biggest fear is that you got to make sure it’s Ivan and not one of our own.’
      ‘It’s definitely an Ivan, sir.’
      The skipper nodded and left the sonar station for the CIC, the Combat Information Center, to begin to plan for the attack.
      The damage control officer was giving a briefing in Damage Control Central, a cabin in the middle of the ship hung with diagrams of the ship highlighting the locations of watertight doors and fire hose outlets. All the men were wearing lifejackets and grey helmets. They had their sleeves rolled down and buttoned and their trousers tucked into their socks. A few of the sailors had rosary beads draped around their necks.
      One of the younger sailors looked particularly nervous and tried to hide his nervousness by making little jokes. His socks weren’t long enough and his trousers kept popping out. ‘Here,’ said the damage control officer handing him a piece of string, ‘tie them.’
      ‘Why, sir, have we got to tuck our trousers in like that anyway?’
      ‘Because when a ship gets hit and the explosions start a lot of guys get nervous – and they start pissing and shitting themselves. You don’t want to be slipping and sliding on decks full of piss and shit when you’re trying to fight fires and deal with dead and wounded.’
    
The skipper of the Beale, like the other ship commanders involved, was authorised to conduct anti-submarine operations without much interference from above. The highest priority was to avoid losing an American warship by lack of decisive action. The skipper turned to his weapons officer: ‘Prepare practice depth charges for immediate launch.’
      It was the ultimate cold war game for a US destroyer commander: finding a Soviet sub and forcing her to surface. The procedure approved for the Cuba crisis was to drop four practice-depth charges as close to the Soviet submarine as possible. The depth charges produced a loud bang, but were supposed to be otherwise harmless. It was a signal for the Soviet sub to surface and identify herself. The US Embassy in Moscow had passed on the details of the procedure to the Kremlin, but the Soviet government had not yet passed the message on to their submarine commanders.

The crew of the B-59, a Soviet Foxtrot class submarine, thought they were about to die. The practice-depth charges were exploding right next to the hull of the sub – one even bounced off the hull with a loud clang before detonating. It felt like they were trapped in a steel barrel that someone was hitting with a sledgehammer.
      The B-59 was in a desperate situation. Her batteries were so low that she had been forced to switch to emergency lighting which left the submarine in a murky gloom. It was stifling hot, plus forty-five degrees Celsius, and the carbon dioxide level had become so dangerously high that crew had begun to pass out. Ironically, the most comfortable place in the submarine was next to the ten-kiloton nuclear-tipped torpedo in the forward section of the hull. It was the place furthest from the toxic fumes and heat of the engine room.
      The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievich Savitsky, had had enough. ‘We’re under attack,’ he shouted. ‘It is obvious that war has already started. Prepare the torpedo for firing. We’re going to blast them now. It doesn’t matter if we die, we will sink them all. We will not disgrace the Soviet Navy!’


Lieutenant Commander Pavlov was not only in charge of the nuclear torpedo on the B-59, he slept beside the polished grey tube like a fond lover. When Captain Savitsky gave the order to prepare the torpedo for firing Pavlov felt two competing pangs of regret. One, he was going to be separated from a complex piece of machinery and advanced technology that he had looked after with obsessive care for many months. Two, he was almost certainly going to die and never see his homeland or his loved ones again. But Pavlov overcame those feelings and began the final preparation rituals. It was impossible not to think of the enormity of his actions and the lives that would be extinguished. Pavlov assumed that the world was already at war and that he had to carry out his duties as part of a greater scheme that he could not question. He unscrewed a cover to make a final check on the coils and electrical connections that connected detonator and warhead. When that was done, he completed the final task. Pavlov could not keep his hands from shaking as he removed the green ‘safety connector plug’ and replaced it with the red ‘arming plug’.

The submarine’s second in command, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, came from a peasant family and had made his way up the ranks through technical expertise and calm judgement. The previous year he had helped save a nuclear submarine with a coolant leak that resulted in the deaths of eight sailors and threatened to blow up the reactor. Arkhipov received a heavy dose of radiation, but helped devise a jury-rigged coolant system that saved the submarine. Arkhipov was now trying to save the world.
      The authorisation of all three senior officers aboard was needed to launch the nuclear torpedo. The Political Officer, Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, was in accord with Captain Savitsky that war had broken out. The submarine had been buffeted by four more explosions. Although the crew of the B-59 had no way of knowing, the explosions had been caused by hand grenades dropped by a destroyer that had joined the Beale. Both Savitsky and Maslennikov felt they were now bound by honour and duty to attack the US aircraft carrier leading the task group. ‘We have no choice,’ said Maslennikov, ‘we need to defend Soviet forces from further attacks. This is war.’
      ‘If,’ said Arkhipov, ‘the Americans were trying to sink us we would already be dead.’
      ‘They’re incompetent,’ said Savitsky, ‘and we’ve been taking evasive action.’
      ‘They may be incompetent, but they are not trying to sink us. They have not dropped fully-armed depth charges. If we are not certain that a state of war exists, we cannot take the risk of starting a war that will kill tens of millions of our citizens. I refuse,’ said Arkhipov, ‘to give my authorisation to use that torpedo. If you ignore my refusal, you are both disobeying standing orders. In any case, it will soon be night. I suggest we surface under cover of darkness and radio Moscow for further instructions.’
      Savitsky looked hard at Arkhipov. He then angrily picked up the internal telephone connecting the control centre to the torpedo room.
      A hundred feet forward Pavlov lifted the clanging phone off its hook. He felt a shiver go down his spine as he heard the captain’s voice bark out the crisp order. Pavlov wasn’t sure that he had heard correctly, so he asked the captain to repeat the order for confirmation. Savitsky’s voice sounded even more irritated than it had the first time. Pavlov replied, ‘Order understood. I will carry out instruction immediately.’
      Pavlov put the phone back and went back to the torpedo. His hands were completely calm as he removed the ‘arming plug’ and replaced it with the ‘safety connector plug’. Tears were flowing down his cheeks as he stroked the torpedo tube. ‘Not now my sweetest, maybe never.’
     
In the end, the B-59 was not able to have a quiet chat with Moscow. She surfaced on to a night sea surrounded by American ships that were shining search lights at her conning tower. One of the destroyers had a jazz band on deck playing loud amplified music. The idea was to show the Soviet submarine officers that war had not broken out. As the B-59 broke the surface, the band shifted from ‘Boogie Woggie Bugle Boy’ to ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’. 
      When Captain Savitsky appeared from the hatch he was greeted with ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’. He ordered the sailors who followed him not to smile or make eye contact with the Americans. ‘Behave with dignity,’ he said, ‘they are trying to humiliate us.’
      A large group of American sailors were dancing on the jazz band ship’s deck in time to the music. Others were throwing packages of cigarettes and Coca-Cola at the Soviet submariners. Most of the offerings fell into the sea, but the ones that landed on the submarine were ignored and left to the washing waves.

Edinburgh International Book Festival 2012

This year we timed our annual holiday so as to spend a week in Edinburgh to take in events at the festival as well as meet people and step outside a bit and enjoy fringe events too.

The first week was to be our week and we set aside just 3 days to attend the festival but what we didn't realise is that the festival is actually addictive and that we quickly changed that to 6 days, so if you plan on attending the festival at all then be warned!

We met and made a lot of friends and attended events and book signings and here are but a few.

i) Alan Bissett - Maryom chatted about Pack Men and how it is not just for male football fans. We also saw Alan at the Festival Cafe (a BBC Scotland radio show) where he talked about and performed a brief excerpt from his one man fringe show for arachnophobes - extremely funny, catch him if you can.

ii) Barry Hutchinson - We talked with Barry and other Scottish authors about the difficulties caused by branding books as 'Scottish' and how buyers in England avoid such books for some reason perhaps in the belief that they are "all haggis and tartan".

iii) Linda Strachan - We chatted about many things and had a sneak preview of the cover for Don't Judge Me, her next teen novel to be published by Strident in Autumn.

iv) Keren David and Cat Clarke talked about motivations for writing, methods of writing and other things and read from their latest books and The Mole discussed with Cat Clarke the character with which she identifies and although we disagreed on choice her father was in agreement with The Mole.

v) Keith Charters  - We chatted at length on many subjects surrounding publishing and many NOT publishing related.

vi) Matt Cartney - We chatted about several things... but more on this meeting in a later post.

vii) Edward Wilson talked of his route to writing spy thrillers and read from his  book.

viii) James Mayhew - We saw him story telling and painting in a way that he does so well.

ix) S J Watson signed Maryom's copy of Before I Go To Sleep and chatted about it and the publicity campaign surrounding it.

And one of the great things is that at the festival you can meet so many people by chance..while in the yurt, apparently Neil Gaiman walked past and we missed him, we brushed passed and chatted with Nicola Morgan in the bookshop and we met and chatted with Victoria Campbell as well as brushing past an Archbishop.

The problem is that you cannot do everything you want to do and we missed many people. There were also so many authors and friends we would like to have met in the second week, but sadly due to the GCSE results day in England then it had to be the first week only.