The Cover Wife - Dan Fesperman

 

I've enjoyed several of Dan Fesperman's novels since reading his The Prisoner of Guantanamo back in 2007. The books appeal to me primarily because they always seem to be on topics ripped right from the headlines of tomorrow's newspaper. The Cover Wife, even though it is set in 1999 Germany, feels just as current because it deals with a problem that is as scary in 2024 as it was in 1999: fanatical, Islamist-influenced terrorism that could strike anywhere, anytime despite the world's quarter of a century of trying to control the threat.

This is the story, much of it factually based, of exactly how close authorities in the U.S. and Germany came to nipping the 9-11 plot in the bud, even to being able to stop it before the terrorists ever reached the U.S. - and how authorities in both countries instead found a way to blow their one and only chance to get the job done.

Claire Saylor is not exactly a team-player of a CIA agent. So when Claire is chosen to impersonate the wife of a German-book-touring American professor whose new book is certain to bring the wrath of Islam down on his head, she sees it as punishment for the trouble she caused on her last case. Claire, though, starts to feel a little better about the assignment when she learns that the team leader is a man she both respects and has a little history with. She is officially to be the nerdy professor's head of personal security, but that's not all Claire is going to be doing - especially after the whole operation almost immediately start falling apart all around her and her team. 

In alternating chapters, Fesperman focuses on a young Moroccan immigrant to Germany as he is groomed by a small group of radicals at his local mosque. The young man's skills and loyalty are tested and judged via small assignments he is given to complete on his own, and soon enough he becomes member of the team. The Moroccan, however, has a secret of his own: the protective feelings he has for the Westernized Muslim wife of another young man in the same group of conspirators.

Claire recognizes that the new recruit may be a weak link the agency can exploit if she can only keep him alive long enough to do so. But that won't be easy because the FBI and German authorities are also aware of this particular group of Muslim radicals  - and no one is sharing intelligence or operational planning with anyone else. Three agencies, three separate missions, and no one is willing to share details or responsibilities. And that goes for the CIA and the FBI, as well.

Fesperman always handles a complicated plot very well, and The Cover Wife is no exception. In less capable hands, all of the inter-agency infighting, along with the numerous characters who come in and out of the story, may have made this a difficult plot to follow. The Cover Wife can certainly be read as a straight-up spy thriller, but readers paying a little extra attention will recognize that many of the characters and places are real ones snatched from what was learned in the aftermath of the 9-11 murders. If you don't already know Dan Fesperman's work, The Cover Wife and Safe Houses, the novel that precedes it, are good places to start reading.