Condition Black

With Condition Black, Gerald Seymour comes into his own. Over the course of a dozen nov- els, he has long been at the top of the aficio- nados' list of international thriller writers; but while others have been replaying Cold War Communist scenarios and rehashing Nazi evil, he has been writing~and warning us-of the real dangers in which we are living. Condition Black, completed just before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, is the third consecu- tive novel that Seymour has set in the Middle East. In an Author's Note, written after the invasion, he states, "... There were a few men, a tiny minority, in the gray world of the inter- national intelligence community, who had warned of the gathering storm; and they were not heeded. The few spoke out, the many did not listen. A host of excuses were readily at hand to justify the ignoring of the danger. Iraq was the enemy of Iran, and therefore Saddam Hussein was to be humored. The weight of power politics and money counted, and the cost of those months of inactivity while the war machine of Iraq prepared can now be reckoned. This is a story of those wasted months, and of the many who closed their ears and shut their eyes and who were governed by stupidity and self-interest and greed, and of the brave few who cried of the danger." One of the hallmarks of Gerald Seymour's fiction is his use of two apparently parallel plot lines that move closer and closer together until they inexorably unite. Bill Erlich, an FBI agent stationed in Rome, is assigned to find out who killed Harry Lawrence, a CIA operative in Athens, For Erlich, the task rep- resents a double challenge. Not only was Harry a personal friend, but the opportunity to find his murderer can, pragmatically, bring to Erich the recognition and chance for advancement that he desperately wants. At the same time, all that is standing between Iraq and its possession of an atomic bomb is a Western scientist with the requisite knowledge of nuclear fission. The candidate the Iraqis choose as most likely to defect is Frederick Bissett, an underpaid, underappre- ciated member of the British Atomic Weap- ons Establishment at Aldermaston, a man with a lusty young wife, two small sons, and a large overdraft at the bank. The figure who will cause the paths of Erich and Bissett to intersect is Colin Oliver Louis Tuck, known acronymically as Colt, one of the most memorable and cold-blooded assassins in fiction. Colt is a twenty-six-year- old Englishman, the son of a World War II hero. Colt is also a professional killer in the employ of the Iraqis and, paradoxically, an animal-rights activist who is deeply devoted to his mother. (It was Harry Lawrence's mis- fortune to be in the way when Colt shot an Iraqi dissident.) Colt, briefly and secretly back in England to visit his dying mother, is empowered by Baghdad to act as its liaison in the wooing of Frederick Bissett. What neither Colt nor his superiors know is that Erlich, too, is in England, moving ever closer to his quarry despite the obstructions and obfusca- tons thrown in his path by the British Intelli- gence and police communities. In his acute insight into the British Estab- lishment, American ambition, the interna- tional agencies, and the perils of the Middle East, including startling scenes within Iraq, Gerald Seymour once again demonstrates that he is a prophet of our headlines.