The spy vs. the sheik of deception
Daniel Silva spins an addictive yarn about contemporary Middle East politics
If bestselling author Daniel Silva gets an invitation to visit a Saudi Arabian embassy, he better run the other way. That’s because the thread running through his latest page-turner, “The New Girl,” is a thinly disguised reference to journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s actual murder and dismemberment at Istanbul’s Saudi consulate last year.
For spy thriller fans, Mr. Silva has created a brand as recognizable as Coca-Cola. His winning formula features quickly sketched characters who hopscotch around the globe mitigating violence with flashes of romance, dollops of wistful sentiment and touches of humor. (For example: Christopher says, “Are you armed?” Gabriel responds, “Only with a quick wit and abundant charm.”)
More substantive are Mr. Silva’s trademark history lessons and accounts of current events. But in “The New Girl,” he comes very close to naming names. It is real-life Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who nearly gets name-checked.
In the novel’s chess game of intrigue, the character based on Salman is Khalid bin Mohammed, who is set to become the House of Saud’s next king. “He looked like a Hollywood version of an Arab prince,” Mr. Silva says. “Even without the money and expensive toys his charm and charisma were irresistible.”
Khalid’s exploits with Mr. Silva’s longtime hero, Gabriel Allon, chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service, are as riveting as they are unlikely. “For better or worse, and for all the wrong reasons, they were now the closest of friends.”
But truth is stranger than fiction and the author presents a realistic portrait of the conflicts and contradictions at play in
contemporary Saudi Arabia.
About the fictional Khalid, Mr. Silva says: “He allowed women to drive and attend sporting events, making the hard-liners inside the religious community furious.” Which is exactly what the actual Crown Prince did just last year.
“The New Girl” shows very clearly what any progressive ruler in the Saudi kingdom is up against. The author offers a crash course in Wahhabi, the strictly orthodox Sunni Muslim sect that has a covenant with the House of Saud. Backed by powerful clerics, its squads of religious police enforce the rules of ultraconservative Islamic purity.
The real Crown Prince called a blueprint to modernize his country Vision 2030. In the story it’s called The Way Forward, but it amounts to the same thing. Mr. Silva describes the need to “transform the Saudi economy into something other than the world’s gas station” and predicts that in 20 years the price of oil will fall to zero.
This desire to improve women’s lives and diversify from petrodollars is what made Mr. Khashoggi initially support Crown Prince Salman in the actual Saudi saga. These feelings are shared by Mr. Silva’s fictional journalist, Omar Kawwf, until Khalid arrests dissidents and spends billions of dollars on homes, yachts and paintings. That’s when Kawwf, “unleashed a Twitter storm against him. He painted Khalid as a fraud and grifter who had no intention of real political reform.”
To further complicate matters, the author explains that while the kingdom’s civil rights record is terrible, “The Saudis are valuable assets in a troubled region; America’s closest ally in the Arab world.” Although the Saudis want American technology, the Russians would gladly become their partners with “no lectures about democracy or human rights abuses,” Mr. Silva says.
Readers who don’t care about politics will certainly still enjoy “The New Girl,” which spins an excellent yarn. A shocking explosion, a chance encounter, a radioactive toxin, a lie to a mole and a super twist at the end are all elements that make the book’s 468 pages fly by.
Mr. Silva brings back many favorite characters from previous novels, including former CIA agent Sarah Bancroft and traitor Rebecca Manning, who tells Gabriel: “Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but the long-cherished institutions of the West are in tatters.”
Also seen briefly is Gabriel’s wife, the amazing Chiara, who is still in the apartment cooking, taking care of their twins, and waiting for her husband to return. Mr. Silva is so tuned into what’s currently happening that it seems time for him to quit commenting on Chiara’s beauty and get her out of the house!