"A Most Wanted Man,” by John Le Carré, 2008
Le Carré is one of the more left-wing
writers in the UK. This, one of his latest books, will also be a
film featuring the last appearance by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died while it
was being filmed. While not as strong a
book as “The Constant Gardner” or “Absolute Friends,” this one tackles the
issue of extraordinary rendition, combining all of Le Carre’s knowledge of intrusive
spy-craft with a too-human story. Issa
is a mysterious Chechen, dressed in a long overcoat, spouting half-baked Islam,
an “idiot’ of the Dostoevskyian variety.
He escapes from Russia
to Turkey, two countries
that tortured him, then from Sweden
to Hamburg, Germany. There he meets a pretty human-rights lawyer,
Annabel, who takes his case – although it’s not much of a ‘case.’ The case involves a dull German banker, Brue,
who falls for them both. Issa has a
claim on a vast amount of money at Brue’s bank, courtesy of his dead Russian
military father, who laundered it there courtesy of English intelligence as a
thank-you for his spying. Convoluted
much?
It is a somewhat unbelievable story. The central character is not really
sympathetic. The crush developed by the
banker on the cute young lawyer is cliché.
The villains – the secret services of Germany,
the U.K. and the U.S. – are a
somewhat familiar set of creeps, thugs and vicious bureaucrats. Among this mess is a somewhat more
intelligent arm of the German spy services, who want to use Issa to get to Dr.
Abdullah. Abdullah is a well-known
moderate Islamic scholar in Germany
who diverts 5% of the donations he solicits to possible Islamic terrorists. The more subtle Germans want to ‘turn him’
into an informer, and roll up other, real terrorists. The U.S.
thugs and the majority of the Germans and the UK just want to disappear both of
them and send them to an unknown jail without trial – extraordinary
rendition.
Of course you know what happens. In order to do this, one group of
intelligence agents must shaft another in an evidently unending internal power
struggle. The optimists and naive ‘good
guys’ lose.
It is never clearly set out that Issa is a Chechen
terrorist of any actual kind – information to that effect is shot down by one
of the Germans. He’s a pathetic mumbler
with grandiose ideas and a smattering of education – permanently scarred by his
torture. His access to riches, which he
ultimately rejects for himself, reminds the reader of unknown princes in homeless
shelters grasping unread books in their worn hands. He’s basically innocent.
Extraordinary rendition –being abducted by
secret police like the CIA and sent to an off-site gaol - was first proposed
under Bush I, initiated under Clinton
for accused terrorists, used by Bush II extensively and continued under Obama –
though there are now ostensible rules against torture. It is not much different than the
decades-long disappearances in Latin America
engineered by U.S.-trained death squads, except not all now result in death,
only incarceration and torture. Of course, they
could just send in a drone, but that would not be done in Germany yet.
Le Carré continues his one-man crusade
against the hypocrisies and crimes of the political and economic ruling classes
of the ‘advanced’ nations.
Red Frog
August 28, 2014
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