Review: Archie Henderson

Beirut Station: Two lives of a spy, by Paul Vidich (Pegasus/No Exit Press)

With the devastation in Gaza and the prospect of another war breaking out in Lebanon (did the last one ever end?), this novel seemed like a good idea – if it could explain some of the complexities of Middle East politics. It fell short.

This is a shame since Paul Vidich’s The Matchmaker about West Berlin shortly before the Wall came down was an entertaining spy novel and praised for its “casual elegance” by the New York Times. Vidich strives for that kind of elegance in Beirut Station, but fails to achieve it.

The first problem is the main character. Analise Assad is a Lebanese-American who speaks fluent Arabic. She should be a convincing CIA operative in a hotbed of international intrigue, but she comes across as someone from whom the agency would run a mile before hiring, let alone parachuting into a war zone.

Some of the characters who surround her are convincing, such as the unlikeable Lebanese driver of a Hezbollah warlord, the local police inspector (a sort of Lebanese Poirot) and a tough CIA agent undercover as an AFP reporter. Others not so much, especially her lover, a New York Times correspondent. The South Africans are mere caricatures.

The novel is set in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah (a conflict that looks like resuming any day now). It’s also set against some genuine spy background: the death in 1985 of CIA station chief Bill Buckley, who was kidnapped by Islamic Jihadists, and even Kim Philby, the notorious British traitor, who lived in Beirut from where he absconded to the Soviet Union in a Russian trawler in 1963. 

Philby’s abrupt departure was all the more shocking because he stood up a diplomatic dinner party, one where he had been meant to join his wife, Eleanor. The author seems to have enjoyed bringing Philby into the story and even uses his flat, a convenient observation post on a corner where he could easily watch all the comings and goings as the net closed in on him, alas too late.

Analise Assad’s cover in the story is also unconvincing. She used the UN High Commission for Refugees but was often at events that should have raised suspicions, but did not.

Where the novel succeeds is in showing up the duplicity of the alliance between the CIA and Mossad, Israel’s secret service. The two agencies appear to work together to assassinate the Hezbollah warlord, but Mossad has its own agenda and plays the CIA.

It all seems very likely, but Glen Corn, a CIA agent for 34 years, was unimpressed with Beirut Station, especially on the deviousness of Mossad and Israeli intrigue back in Washington. 

While giving Vidich credit for his research that gives a “taste” of the city, he says the book is filled with “inaccuracies and exaggerations that make [it] read more like a Levantine version of the popular TV Series The Illegals, than a realistic story about CIA operations in Beirut”.  

He says the description of the main character’s tradecraft and cover are “unrealistic and his description of the various personalities in the novel sometimes appear simplistic and stereotypical, and while he tries hard to cram a great deal of information into the storyline, it often feels that content is added simply to demonstrate research done or familiarity with history related to espionage in Lebanon”.

I can only agree. It started with some promise, but gradually grew tedious.