Tale of intrigue borrows heavily from the Trumps
Novel lifts from KGB history, imagination to echo life of president’s first wife, Ivana
In an era when our credulity is stretched daily by political stories — Russian interference in the U.S. election? A president who pays off porn stars? — the idea that a president’s former wife was trained by the KGB to trap a man with political aspirations might not be so hard to believe.
In the new novel The Kingfisher Secret, the story goes like this: Elena Klimentova, a beautiful young Czech gymnast, is recruited as a teenager to the Swallow program, one of many young women trained by the KGB and Czechoslovakia’s StB to become involved with a man who has both power and ambitions — but he must also be one she can manipulate. She is trained, given a cover as a Czech model, marries Anthony Craig, a scion of a car company his father founded who prefers to have it believed he’s self-made. Sound familiar? There’s more. Her job is to encourage Craig in his political ambitions — all the way to the top if need be — in order “to encourage and create agents of disorder and chaos in America, to use democracy as a weapon against itself.”
The narrative jumps locales as often and as quickly as a private jet in a time warp: from Czechoslovakia now and in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, to Strasbourg to Florida to Russia to New York. Some of the action takes place in Montreal where Grace, the journalist protagonist who struggles with her professional ethics, lives and works — and also where the future Ivana Trump lived before she met Donald..
In fact, many of the references in the book seem to point to the former Mrs. Trump and the current president. In the novel, the Craig auto business runs into trouble and “Elena” makes arrangements for her Russian connections to help out with loans. At that point, of course, the influence of the Russians is deep — as is Craig’s understanding that he must toe the line or lose everything.
The book The Kingfisher Secret comes out Tuesday in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Germany. All we know about the author is that he is “a respected writer and former journalist” publishing under the name Anonymous. We spoke to him by phone (his area code indicated the U.S. West Coast). Why publish as Anonymous? It would not have been my choice, but the person who told me this story made me promise to do it this way because of his past and people he thought could recognize him through a connection between us. What information did your source give you?
The time that she (Ivana Trump) came to North America — to Canada originally and then to the United States — was, according to this gentleman, the most difficult to get out of Czechoslovakia.
You might find it fun to read Jonathan Van Meter’s story from1989 in Spy magazine which he and his team called an “Investigative Tribute” because nothing checked out in the story that this person and her husband and others were telling about her. You begin to wonder what would be the reason for that. At that time there was no (presidential) campaign in the works. What would be your reason to falsify your biography?
Is this an entertainment or an exposé?
This is an entertainment. The aspects in (this book) that do have a whiff of truth come from the conversation I had with the gentleman that told a bit of the story.
Why not just do a story, an investigative piece?
I believe that was my first thought, but I also found there’s almost nothing to write about. (Much) of the source material is gone, it’s been taken away and locked up or it’s been burned.
I went to Europe and I looked into these archives, I looked at the Institute for Totalitarian regimes (in Prague) and I did many interviews and I found there should be boxcars full of files of, at that time, the most famous expatriate from Czechoslovakia. (But there is just) a tiny file, redacted, mostly about her father, and some interviews. What is this work meant to be?
It is meant to be a work of the imagination based in the real world — strange how some people see this as an attack on the good work of journalists. I love journalism but there’s also room for fun.
Looking at what others had tried to achieve as journalists, another big 300page question mark wasn’t as interesting to me as writing a novel. What are you hoping will come out of writing this?
I think it is so easy to be discouraged and, no matter what side you’re on, to see the other side as clownish and evil. I would hope that people have some fun in the sense of entertainment. But if there’s anything else about it, can we try to have some sympathy for people who might truly be caught up in something they didn’t imagine for themselves? I think novels at their best are these empathy machines. Can we have a little bit of understanding?