Mister 8

Free Agent U.S. Cover

Somewhere in the midst of Jeremy Duns’ debut novel, Free Agent, we begin pulling for the villain. And while the novel plainly presents the world of politics, espionage and war as varying shades of grey, the lead character of the book, Paul Dark, is undoubtedly a villain. This fact is clearly drawn for the reader by Duns in the opening chapters of the novel, wherein Dark murders his boss — an old family friend who is also his girlfriend’s father, no less — to protect a secret history of treachery, leaking British secrets to the NKVD.

Twenty-four years prior, Dark, under the guidance of his legendary father, Lawrence, took part in a Churchill-condoned secret mission to kill war criminals who had tortured and killed British soldiers, women and children. After one mission went awry, Dark found himself in a hospital, cared for by the beautiful Marxist Anna, who eventually in death delivered the catalyst for turning Dark to the Soviets.

Now, it’s 1969, and an older Dark learns, through the testimony of a potential defector, that Anna faked her own death, and that he might possibly be fingered as a double-agent. Complicating matters is the fact that, sitting across the table from him in the intelligence meeting where he hears the full story, is Henry Pritchard, the third secret member of the war criminal hunting squad. Dark has a short time to find the defector, then Anna, and prevent them from spilling the goods. His mission takes him to Nigeria, then in the midst of a brutal civil war, where he encounters a number of characters who make human nature seem quite horrific.

Duns’ novel draws on a number of historical circumstances to create an effective, mostly believable world for Dark to inhabit. At the immediate surface, there are the researched truths regarding the Nigerian Civil War, the plotting against Prime Minister Wilson, and the creeping influence of American soul in world culture. But beneath that is the lasting influence of the Cambridge spies, who proved that mass infiltration of intelligence networks was possible, and at the highest levels. The best of the spy novelists before him, like Deighton and Le Carré have also tread this ground, but in Duns’ hands, it is not so familiar. By making Dark the narrator, we find ourselves sympathizing with, if not completely understanding his treachery. And as he caroms from one inescapable situation to the next, we find ourselves rooting for the traitor to keep his secret against all odds.

Part of the appeal of the novel, and a partial exoneration for traitor-loving readers, is that it plays out as a redemption tale (or at least the first part of one). Dark realizes he’s been played for a patsy, and had already confronted his Soviet handler with misgivings about his work. The problem is that once you’re a double-agent, it’s hard to leave the game, as Dark finds out again and again. Dark waivers between acting completely in his own self-interest, and acting out of compassion or a sense of right and wrong. In the end, he’s forced to choose between his country of birth and the one he’s been serving for the past quarter century, though the reader can’t help but wonder if his actions would have been the same if the nationality of the assassination target was reversed. Perhaps Dark is, as the title suggests, truly a free agent.

All in all, this was a smooth, quality read by a writer so well-versed in the classics of the thriller genre that he was able to break convention and create something original. There were a few issues I had with the book — I lamented the lack of sympathetic female characters (a journalist named Isabelle at first seems a capable candidate during a car chase in Lagos, but later becomes fatalistically naive, perhaps as a mirror to a younger Dark), and I desired more closure for some of the colorful characters we met along the way (Duns does an especially wonderful job with these: Gunner, the Thompson-Bola family, Geoffrey Manning) — but perhaps these will be resolved with Dark’s next outing, Duns’ Free Country, a final draft of which I believe was recently submitted.

My final, speculative thought is this: if make-up and nerve gas worked once to fool Dark….