Thrillers Get Boost as Soviet Plots Thicken

Shvabrin leaned forward slightly so that his face was close to Gorbachev’s. He said, “I was right, you know. You really are a trusting, naive fool. You let me get within seconds of killing you, and all for an old friendship. You’re soft, Mikhail Sergeyevich, too soft for the job. You’re just not tough enough.” --from “Strange Bedfellows,” Herbert Burkholz’s 1988

Before he was kicked out of office--at least momentarily--by this week’s bizarre and ineffective coup, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had been placed in political peril uncounted times by die-hard novelists desperately milking the Cold War for one more conspiracy.

In a host of recent thrillers, American writers had threatened the ousted Soviet leader with assassination, kidnaping and elaborate coup plots, usually spawned by true-believing Communists intent on making the Motherland once more safe for Marxism.

But even in these fictional bastions of the Cold War, the crumbling of communism has brought sweeping change. Gorbachev is often portrayed as a good guy. And he frequently is saved in the nick of time by . . . the CIA.

Now that fact has overtaken fiction, it seems likely that this sub-genre will get a lift as readers supplement accounts of inscrutable Kremlin chicanery with imaginary scenarios of cutthroat power politics.

Already, at least two writers are getting a boost for their prescient books about plots against the engineer of perestroika and glasnost.

Bantam Books announced Tuesday that it is speeding up publication of veteran spy novelist Robert Littell’s latest book, “An Agent in Place.” Originally scheduled to be out in mid-January, it will be published next month. The book will be emblazoned with a sticker proclaiming, “The prophetic new thriller that goes behind today’s headlines,” says Bantam spokesman Stuart Applebaum, noting that “one of the plot lines of the book is hard-liners in the Kremlin plotting to overthrow Gorbachev.”

Meanwhile, author Joseph Finder says that since Monday’s coup “apparently there’s been a spike in sales” of his first novel, “The Moscow Club,” published last February by Viking. A scheme by the KGB and the Soviet military-industrial complex to exterminate Gorbachev lies at the center of the long and complex novel, Finder says. He sees some poetic justice in the sales surge, he adds, explaining that the book’s launch was hurt by the Persian Gulf War.

As for this week’s coup, Finder says it is rich in fictional possibilities. If he were writing a novel to explain the failed rebellion, Finder says he would make Gorbachev and Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin co-conspirators. The wily pair would encourage Gorbachev’s apparent downfall to smoke out their enemies--and make fools of them.

More broadly, the failed coup is a blessing for thriller writers everywhere, Finder says. The coup restores mystique and political opacity to the Soviet Union, essential elements for the free reign of imagination.

“The fact that (the coup) happened recharged a lot of batteries,” he says. “Under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union was becoming less mysterious and less baroque. But the coup shows that unpredictability of the Soviet Union is still there.”

Finder is a Soviet expert and former Harvard University faculty member who has written extensively about the Soviet Union. He says he got the idea for his book in 1987 when he first picked up rumblings that Gorbachev might be vulnerable, largely because his reforms were angering staunch Communists.

“I’d been hearing from some people, including some fairly well-placed people in Moscow, that Gorbachev couldn’t last,” says Finder, also the author of the nonfiction book “Red Carpet: The Connection Between the Kremlin and America’s Most Powerful Businessmen.” Partly because of what he learned while writing “Red Carpet,” Finder says, he made the late industrialist Armand Hammer a character in “The Moscow Club.”

Finder also noted that when the novel was issued, “a guy from the CIA called me up and said, ‘You’re really on to something here. A lot of us believe he’s only got four to six months.’ ”

And, yes, the chief character in Finder’s novel is a CIA agent who works desperately to save the Soviet leader.

Publisher Neil Nyren of Putnam, who also edits techno-thriller writer Tom Clancy’s books, says that--at least among novelists--Finder was a little ahead of the curve in his perception of Gorbachev’s shaky hold on power. But within the last two years, as knife-sharpening against Gorbachev became common knowledge, writers turned to unseating the Soviet president as “a natural plot line,” Nyren notes.

Rick Horgan, a senior editor at Warner Books, agrees, adding that the rise of Gorbachev--and a kinder, gentler Soviet Union--put a damper on the traditional Cold War thriller, in which Soviets typically were slimy, sinister caricatures, itching to erase the United States in waves of nuclear fire.

“Basically, writers were forced into a corner,” Horgan says. “They had to focus on regional conflicts . . . or generals plotting against Gorbachev. Sometimes it’s a Soviet premier who isn’t named but just happens to have a birthmark on his forehead.”

In fact, the removal or death of a “peacenik” Soviet leader has become a requirement for a class of thrillers so that the authors can get on with a superpower nuclear confrontation, Horgan adds.

Generally, better-known writers such as Tom Clancy, whose current bestseller is “The Sum of All Fears,” and Dale Brown have avoided the Gorbachev-as-bull’s-eye theme, preferring newer enemies to Western civilization such as Colombian drug lords and an endless number of bad dudes from the fertile Middle East, Horgan says. After the Persian Gulf War, thriller writers began to play off that event, he adds, noting that the current drama in Moscow also is likely to inspire many books.

Truly addicted thriller readers will know that there are other variations: For example, Cold War nostalgia has recently been in vogue. John LeCarre went down memory lane in “The Secret Pilgrim,” a retrospective on careers that flourished in the shadow of the Iron Curtain.

Next month another heavy hitter will opt for this theme. Frederick Forsyth, perhaps best known for “The Day of the Jackal,” will publish “The Deceiver,” a tale of a British spy forced into retirement who looks back on his finest cloak-and-dagger escapades. Forsyth dedicates the novel to Cold Warriors everywhere and closes with the bittersweet epitaph, “Those were the days, my friend.”

At least one writer has gone even further back in time. Earlier this year Alan Furst’s well-received “Dark Star” explored the dangerous ballet between the spy services of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in the years before World War II.

Anyone with a yen to sample the Gorbachev-must-die genre can do so easily. A visit to a Los Angeles-area bookstore turned up five thrillers with this theme in less than half an hour. The sometimes lurid jacket copy helped enormously in sorting out the true Gorbachev volumes from the racks of techno-thrillers.

For instance, the cover of “Concerto” by Dennis Jones proclaims: “In the chill hours of dawn, a TV mobile unit enters the high-security compound of the Soviet consulate outside New York City. Within minutes, nine men lie dead, and the Soviet Union’s most powerful and respected leader--Mikhail Gorbachev--is missing. From the think tanks of Washington to Paris and beneath the streets of Warsaw, the chase is on. . . .”

But this is pretty tame, compared to the promises for Herbert Burkholz’s “Strange Bedfellows.” As Gorbachev prepares to sign a treaty with the United States one of the Soviet president’s “closest associates is armed . . . and ready to kill him.” The breathless jacket copy continues, “The attempt is a failure; the assassin swallows cyanide. Now the U.S. government is determined to unveil the conspiracy by enlisting their most effective spy, Ben Slade. A highly trained ‘sensitive,’ blessed and cursed with the ability to read minds . . .”

When Gorbachev’s downfall was all make-believe it was more fun, says Finder, author of “The Moscow Club.” This week he has been torn between elation over newfound life for his novel and concern about grim events in Moscow.

“It’s deeply depressing,” Finder says.