A CIA Officer Traumatized by the War on Terror: A Novel
BOOK REVIEW: Now They Will Know I Am Here: A CIA Thriller
By Timothy McQuay / Hot Type Publishing LLC
Reviewed by: Kenneth Dekleva
The Reviewer — – Dr. Kenneth Dekleva served as a Regional Medical Officer/Psychiatrist with the U.S. Dept. of State from 2002-2016, and is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Director, Psychiatry-Medicine Integration, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX; he is also a Senior Fellow at the George H.W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations. He is also the author of the novels The Last Violinist and The Negotiator’s Cross. The views expressed are entirely his own and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government, the U.S. Department. of State, or the UT Southwestern Medical Center.
REVIEW — Timothy McQuay is a well-known journalist, who also spent much time overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a Lead Inspector General for Overseas Contingency Operations. The latter experience and knowledge gained provides the backdrop for his excellent first novel, Now They Will Know I Am Here: A CIA Thriller, a riveting tale about the war on terror and its toll upon both its protagonists and counter-terrorism professionals. The book’s title is taken from a cryptic clue found in the aftermath of a terror attack in Paris.
The novel starts off quickly, with a terrorist strike in Paris, and its clues portending a large terror attack on the homeland. We are quickly drawn into the lives of its protagonists, Tom Rivers, a young but already war-weary Army veteran and CIA officer, who was traumatized by his experiences in Iraq, and Raz Jackson, a former CIA officer turned private-sector entrepreneur and business intelligence CEO. Other characters include Rivers’ boss, Mr. Angelos, a cunning and manipulative spymaster who reminds one of the character played by the late Donald Sutherland in the classic movie, The Assignment, or John Le Carre’s Kurtz, the Israeli spymaster in The Little Drummer Girl, who “wheeled and dealed and lied even in his prayers, but he forced more good luck than the Jews had had for two thousand years.” And then there is Dogu Matsoy, a ruthless and evil Chechen turned ISIS operative, and the vengeance-soaked Chechen terrorist (formerly a CIA asset run by Raz in Cairo) named “Umm.” The plot moves quickly, changing settings, from Paris to Washington DC to Dubai to an ISIS refugee camp in Syria, and to Kyiv. McQuay knows his terrain and captures the necessary topical props for such a novel — the Syrian Captagon drug trade, ISIS’ cruelties, and the machinations of CIA and interagency politics in Washington DC.
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Overall, the plot moves quickly to its denouement, and various secrets about its characters and protagonists are discovered along the way. I very much enjoyed this tale and found myself drifting into memory and reverie.
When reading about the Chechen terrorists Dogu and Umm, I found myself remembering my first tour as a diplomat in Moscow, and the Nord-Ost theater siege of 2002. I remembered the fear throughout the city, and the sense that even Moscow was not safe. Other memories flooded me: I recalled being on the ground with an American embassy medical team, a few hundred yards from the theater, on standby (in case any of the five American citizens known to be held inside were released by their Chechen captors). And my senses flooded with memories of an eerie sense and perception on my part that something was dreadfully wrong, and would not end well. I remember the tension, that odd smell and mix of sweat, cigarette smoke, and cordite, as the Russian Spetsnaz forces standing nearby prepared for their tragic assault. And who could forget the images on Russian TV the next day, of the female suicide bombers, known as shahidkas, each with a bullet hole in their forehead.
My reading of this novel also reminded me of the brilliant work of a senior CIA psychologist, Dr. Ursula Wilder, who has written (in her classic study for Brookings) of the toll that such work takes upon these professionals, leading to a loss of innocence, a human price, and sense that one is emotionally changed by such work.
Like Dr. Wilder, I have met many such professionals when stationed overseas in south Asia and traveling to war zones. I felt, while reading McQuay’s novel, a sense of déjà vu, as if I had met Tom Rivers in another life. I recalled debriefing a CIA officer, who had deployed multiple times to war zones, telling me, “I’m very proud of my work, but I sometimes wonder, I can’t help it, when I know that my intelligence gathered helped take out a terrorist who is the same age as my college-aged son.” McQuay likewise brings out the human side of his protagonists Tom and Raz, who would both resonate with Dr. Wilder’s conclusions, and a lingering, uneasy sense of moral injury.
Overall, Timothy McQuay has written a very fine first thriller, which readers will find enjoyable and realistic. He manages to capture the essence and challenges of the ongoing, tragic, and brutal war against terror.
Now They Will Know I Am Here earns a solid 3 out of 4 trench coats
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