BOOK REVIEW: The Collaborators
By Michael Idov / Scribner
Reviewed by: Anne and Jay Gruner
The Reviewers – Anne and Jay Gruner were career CIA officers in analysis and operations, respectively. Anne, formerly Deputy Director of WINPAC, is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and book reviews have appeared in over 20 print and on-line publications, including The Cipher Brief. Jay served as Chief of Station in multiple countries and as area division chief, and founded J.K. Gruner Associates, a business intelligence consultancy. Anne and Jay live in McLean, Virginia with their two golden retrievers. https://www.annegruner.com/
REVIEW — “The Collaborators” by Michael Idov is a suspenseful and imaginative work about “modern day” covert action operations entailing the acquisition, manipulation, and dissemination of open-source material, as well as disinformation, rather than traditional espionage. While press exploitation and propaganda have long been available tools for covert action, the advent of social media and the internet have transformed such means into potentially potent weapons, as evidenced in America’s own political election campaigns. “The Collaborators” gives a creative insight into how such operations abroad might be managed and the problems that can arise.
The principal protagonist, Ari Falk, is a seven-year CIA operations officer who in 2021 is assigned to Riga, Latvia as a nonofficial cover media investor helping Russian opposition journalists find and run stories damaging to the Kremlin. Established in 2014 after Moscow’s takeover of Crimea, the unit and its cover organization, Sokol Media Research, exposes the corruption and highlights the internecine warfare in the Russian kleptocracy. Ari, a millennial in his mid-to-late 30s is an adventurous and experienced officer who has served in Moscow station, and even though Riga is a technical promotion for him, he understands that CIA’s old hands consider it a “soft unit” relative to Moscow. As long as his stories get the views and pick up in the Western media, Ari’s bosses are happy, but his operational requests languish on their desks. The torpor of Washington’s responses is not acceptable once his journalist assets begin to be persecuted and prosecuted for their accurate but embarrassing stories, or even for their simple “tweets.”
The story begins when Ari’s most effective and exuberant asset, Anton Basmanny, a gay video blogger from Yekaterinburg, Russia who resides in Istanbul, exposes and makes a mockery of the Russian deputy defense minister, who is then fired after fifteen million YouTube views in a week. In the wake of the firing, Anton is shadowed in Istanbul and his apartment is doxed. Ari, believing it’s time to get Anton out, files an exfiltration request through Moscow station. Thus begins the exciting opening chapter as a Mig-29 forces Ari’s 737 aircraft enroute from Istanbul to Riga to land at Minsk Airport in Belarus. The incident mirrors an actual 2021 event in which a flight from Greece to Lithuania was diverted to Minsk and a dissident blogger onboard was detained by Belarusian authorities.
When Anton’s flight in Minsk resumes and lands in Riga, where Ari is anxiously waiting for him, the journalist is not onboard, much to Ari’s alarm. In the airport men’s room Ari finds and beats up the local ex-GRU General Karikh who also was waiting for the plane from Minsk and ends up heading to Istanbul to find his lost agent. After some shocking developments and twists and turns in the plot, Ari tries to make sense of who is doing what to whom, and why.
As Ari is sorting things out, a subplot opens concerning the suicide by drowning of a billionaire U.S. investment financier, Paul Obrandt who happened to have been born in the USSR and who had high-level business connections with Russian oligarchs in the financial world. His daughter, Maya Chou Obrandt, who is in her early 20s, is devastated by her father’s reported death and heads to Tangier to see a villa that her father left her in his suicide letter. It appears that her father’s $25 billion fortune in financial assets is “in the wind,” and there are lots of his investors who must be paid off. But what happened to his assets? Was Obrandt forced to hand them over to someone? Or was it all a fraud to begin with? What, if anything, does this have to do with a villa in Tangier?
At this point, the novel begins to resemble an espionage “who done it.” Ari is sent to London for R & R by his boss, the Deputy Director of Covert Activities, Rex Harlow. But R & R is not what he has in mind as he sneaks off to work his way through several mazes to determine the reason for puzzling and fatal events, including “unofficial” trips to Tangier, Morocco and eventually to Moscow. In Tangier he hooks up with Maya Chou Obrandt, who is trying to investigate her father’s alleged suicide. Maya’s valuable family ties in Russia put her in a unique position to provide Ari critical support as the two join forces. Maya proves to be an uncannily skilled collaborator for a young, untrained novice. Ari and Maya together are savvy, innovative, bold, and work well as a team as their interests appear to merge and they work their way through a tangled mess of mysteries and unanswered questions.
The plot is complex, and readers will want to carefully read and connect a number of dots, not all of which are readily visible. A few flashbacks as far back as 1986 are key to understanding relationships and events and providing important clues as to what is happening and why. As in real life, some unanswered questions remain at the end, which could provide fodder for a follow-on novel.
The author, Michael Idov, was born in Latvia when it was occupied by the Soviet Union, and fittingly much of the action takes place in Riga and Moscow. Refreshingly, the writing reflects the author’s command of contemporary culture and technology to describe events, operations, and characters in a way that should especially appeal to younger audiences. Those familiar with Weezer T-shirts, Trip Hop, NES, and mobile Hogwarts games may find the writing particularly intriguing. Similarly, European slang and acronyms that may not be known to all add interest to descriptions and may enlighten readers unfamiliar with Oyster Cards, Woltapp, and IC2 police codes. What better way to learn than by reading them in context?
Retired intelligence operations officers with experience in denied areas such as the Soviet Union and China may find the absence of stringent tradecraft and standard security practices employed by the principal characters a bit disconcerting, particularly with regard to travel to and around Russia and Moscow. In addition, CIA professionals may find some of the procedures described in the story as risky, unreal, and not consistent with the old “Moscow Rules,” that no longer appear to apply in this modern-day intelligence melee. The question some retired intelligence officials may ask is to what extent does the world described by Michael Idov reflect current reality, especially in light of the evolution of information technology, AI, the vast and chaotic flow of international finances, and hard-to-control cross-border movements.
While The Collaborators is not a traditional spy novel, it is an entertaining and action-packed thriller filled with riddles, shoot-outs, chases and shocking revelations in a modern, non-traditional environment. It is fresh and fun and may appeal to those who do not normally read spy novels.
Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Brief’s Digital Channel on YouTube? Watch The Cipher Brief’s interview with CIA Director Bill Burns as he talks about The Middle East, Russia, China and the thing that keeps him up at night.
The Cipher Brief participates in the Amazon Affiliate program and may make a small commission from purchases made via links.
Interested in submitting a book review? Send an email to [email protected] with your idea.
Sign up for our free Undercover newsletter to make sure you stay on top of all of the new releases and expert reviews.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.
Search