Right from the title you’ll know Merle Nygate’s new political thriller will be provocative. It echoes the notorious antisemitic conspiracy theory, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed to be a true account of Jewish plans to take over the world. This screed originated in Russia and, though it has been debunked for a century, it remains influential and even was compulsory for German schoolchildren in the Nazi era.
Nygate’s book is set in the current, politically fraught day and begins with Hamas’s deadly attack on Israeli settlements of 7 October 2023. The main characters are London based operatives of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, with family members and friends in the thick of the upheavals in their home country. They are bereft, soul-searching about how intelligence-gathering failed, and frustrated with the destructive course of the fighting since. It is a tribute to Nygate’s sensitivity and skill that her story never seeks easy answers or turns into a polemic.
When I started reading, I feared the plot would be too close to the actual events described in the daily news. I feared it would end up being limited by on-the-ground reality or, if it deviated too dramatically from actual events, it could be hard to take seriously. However, Nygate has melded fact and fiction most artfully.
This is possible, in part, because The Protocols of Spying is third in a trilogy and the main characters have already been introduced and their worldviews and ethical strengths and weaknesses established. I haven’t read the first two books, but had no difficulty grasping the relationships and their history together. More than that, Nygate herself knows these characters well by now, so when she puts them in a fraught situation, she knows how they will react. This keeps them grounded and their actions believable, despite the instability of the world around them.
There are two main plotlines, and Nygate builds strong tension as these plots develop. Eli Amiram, the head of Mossad’s London Station, suspects that a long-time adversary in the service is planning an operation that is not only illegal, but immoral. It will take some doing to understand what this well-connected colleague is up to, to convince him to call it off.
Failing that, he’ll have to persuade the higher-ups that this plan is deeply flawed and must be stopped at all costs. In an organisation in which keeping secrets and hiding information is the lifeblood, all this is extremely problematic and may not work. And, Eli can’t avoid wondering, what if he’s wrong?
In the second plot thread the intersection with actual events in Gaza are strongest. Eli enlists the help of a British woman named Petra. In an earlier book, she was involved with a project of Eli’s that ended badly. At the outset, she considers herself finished with intelligence work and has even turned down a job with MI5. But Eli is persuasive. For good reason, he believes she’d be the perfect person to recruit a particular Palestinian to be a lochesh, or whisperer, within the likely new Palestinian government.
What Eli wants is not to find someone who will reveal Palestinian secrets to the Israelis, but the exact opposite. He wants to find someone who will to use his credibility and high connections to encourage stability and peace in the Middle East. A high-wire act, truly. Brilliant, unexpected and humane.
Eli, his number two, Rafi, and Petra, are well drawn, believable characters, as is Wasim, their lochesh candidate. They have flaws, but they’re smart, hard-working and show flashes of humour. Eli’s team is particularly well-resourced with bright people who are on top of the surveillance technology and how to manipulate it. You may never take a video at face value again! Their success in dark days you can only hope for.
Nygate’s descriptions of the Mossad offices, their security protocols, the restaurants they favour, their relationships outside the agency, all seem true-to-life. She offers enough description to make them seem genuine but not an overload of detail. I read this as the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement was in its final stage of negotiation, which was a rather constant reminder of the importance of the issues wrestled with in this memorable story.
Also see The Collaborators by Michael Idov or Moscow X by David McCloskey.
No Exit Press
Print/Kindle/iBook
£10.11
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
