The Company: A Novel of the CIA

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Penzler Pick, March 2002: Robert Littell, long known as one of the best writers of fiction about the Cold War, is not as well known as John le Carré or the great Charles McCarry, but nevertheless has a devoted following among serious aficionados of the literary spy novel. His latest book, which runs close to 900 pages and covers the years 1950 to 1995, is an ambitious one that is destined to become the definitive novel about the CIA.

The historical events of that crucial period are well known to most of us. The end of World War II and the division of Germany into sectors by the Allies laid the groundwork for the Cold War and the rise of the OSS, a wartime branch of the American government, into one of the most powerful tools of intelligence.

The involvement of that agency in the defection of Burgess and MacLean from Britain to the Soviet Union; the Suez Canal crisis, which ended Britain's role as a superpower; the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis; the arming of rebels in Afghanistan to repel the encroaching Soviet forces; the Gulf War--all are well documented here.

All these events, which had such major consequences for our own history and that of the world, were well known to, organized by, or played out with the full cooperation of the CIA. These, as well as such minor events as defections on both sides, are the backdrop to this novel which stars a large cast of characters who we get to know as young men and women recruited while still in college. Their personal and public lives are followed as they rise through the ranks of the Company, and we know that one of them is a mole. We don't know who it is any more than the CIA does, and it will take years to unmask the traitor.

In the meantime, we have become involved not only with Littell's fictional characters, but also with some of the real people who inhabited that world: William F. Buckley Jr., G. Gordon Liddy, William Casey--and we are privy to conversations in both the Kennedy and Reagan Oval Offices.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Since the publication of his 1973 debut thriller, The Defection of A. J. Lewinter, Robert Littell has evolved into one of the most credible, consistently interesting espionage novelists of the modern era. With the possible exception of Charles McCarry, no other American writer has illuminated the world of the professional spy so convincingly and with such a profusion of gritty, authoritative detail.

Littell's 13th novel, The Company, is clearly his magnum opus: a huge, multigenerational saga that encompasses the complete 40-year history of the bitterly contested Cold War. The novel begins in late 1950 in the emblematic center of that war: Berlin. CIA station chief Harvey Torrita (a.k.a. the Sorcerer) and his newly arrived assistant, Jack McAuliffe (known, naturally, as the Sorcerer's Apprentice), are attempting to organize the exfiltration of a KGB defector who possesses some dangerous secrets. The most vital of these concerns the possible existence of a Soviet agent -- a mole -- in the upper echelons of the Western intelligence services. The meticulously planned defection fails, due to a high-level security leak -- clear evidence that a highly placed traitor really does exist. The mole, we learn shortly, is Adrian "Kim" Philby, an MI5 department head and legendary double agent. The Sorcerer's attempts to unmask Philby dominate the early sections of the narrative. In Littell's version of events, however, Philby is not the only traitor in the corridors of power. A second double agent, code-named Sasha, has successfully infiltrated the CIA. Sasha's controller is a near-mythical Soviet intelligence officer known as "Starik" (the Old Man). Starik's long-term goal involves the destruction of the capitalist system through the destabilization of the Western economy. As Starik's devious master plan slowly takes shape, Littell provides us with a dramatic overview of many of the Cold War's most memorable moments.

Effectively intermingling actual historical figures (Philby, Allen Dulles, Boris Zeltsin, John and Robert Kennedy, and -- most vividly -- the brilliant, obsessive counterintelligence specialist James Jesus Angleton) with his fictional creations (credibly drawn Cold Warriors from the CIA, the KGB, MI6, and Israel's Mossad), Littell moves the action from one political pressure point to another. Highlights include the tragic account of the Hungarian uprising of 1956 (crushed with brutal efficiency by Soviet forces); a meticulous portrait of the conception, planning, and execution of the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion; and a vivid glimpse of Russia's long, futile ground war in Afghanistan. Littell ends the novel, appropriately enough, with a masterful re-creation of the Gorbachev putsch of 1995, a failed revolt that nevertheless effectively ended Communist Party dominance in the USSR.

The Company is the sort of popular epic that entertains and educates at the same time. In a compelling, wide-ranging narrative that combines the historical sweep of The Revolutionist -- Littell's underrated account of Soviet life during the Stalin years -- with the suspense and immediacy of his best thrillers (The Sisters, The Amateur, The Once and Future Spy), Littell gives us the Cold War era in all its ambiguous glory, showing us the all-too-human faces behind the dominant ideological conflict of the 20th century. (Bill Sheehan)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Robert Littell creates a multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic saga of the ClA - "The Company" to insiders. The fictional and historical characters of Robert Littell's novel reveal much of the nearly fifty years of this complex and powerful organization. At the heart is a mole hunt involving the CIA, M16, KGB, and Mossad - a stunningly conceived trip down the rabbit hole to the labyrinthine Alice-in-Wonderland world of espionage, a "wood where things have no names."

Racing across a landscape spanning the legendary Berlin Base of the '50s - the front line of the simmering Cold War Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Bay of Pigs, Afghanistan, and the Gorbachev putsch, The Company tells the thrilling story of agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an enemy that is amoral, elusive, formidable.

Littell also lays bare the internecine warfare within The Company itself, adding another dimension to the spy vs. spy game. An atmosphere of distrust pits the counter-intelligence agents behind the desks in Washington, like the utterly obsessive real-life mole hunter James Jesus Angleton, against the covert action boys in the field, like The Company's Harvey Torriti - The Sorcerer - a brilliant and brash rules breaker, and his Apprentice, Jack McAuliffe, recruited fresh out of Yale, who learns both tradecraft and the hard truths of life in the field.

As this dazzling anatomy of the CIA unfolds, nothing less than the future is at stake. And the future is often only the day after tomorrow. At once a celebration of a long Cold War well fought and an elegy for the end of an era.

FROM THE CRITICS

Booklist

If Le Carre is the Joyce of spy novelists Littell is the Dickens. Le Carre's focus has always been internal--spying as a metaphorical search for identity. Littell, on the other hand, wants to represent the entire espionage, a landscape on his canvas the social and political aspects, as well as the psychological. He's done that superbly, from The Defection of A.J. Lewinter through Walking Back the Cat (1997), but never in as much detail as in this nearly 1,000-page spy novel as epic. Seamlessly mixing real events and real people with the story of four fictional spies, Littell presents the history of the CIA, from post-war Berlin to the present. As Littell tells it, the story of the cold war is an Alice in Wonderland-like saga of multiple U.S. fiascoes leading inexplicably to a most peculiar victory.

Publishers Weekly

This impressive doorstopper of a book is like a family historical saga, except the family is the American intelligence communities. It has all the appropriate characters and tracks them over 40 years: a rogue uncle, the Sorcerer, a heavy drinking chief of the Berlin office in the early Cold War days; a dashing hero, Jack McAuliffe, who ages gracefully and never losses his edge; dastardly turncoat, who for the sake of the reader will not be identified here, but who dies notably; a dark genius, the real life James Jesus Angleton, who after the disclosure that an old buddy; British spy Kim Philby, had been a Russian agent all along, became a model of paranoia; a Russian exchange students who starts out with all our heroes at Yale but then works for "the otherside" and endless assorted ladyfolks, wives, girlfriends, and gutsy daughters— who are not betrayed with anything like the gritty relish of the men. Littel, an old hand at the genre (he wrote the classic The Defection of A.J. Lewinter) keeps it all moving well, and there are convincing set pieces; the fall of Budpest, the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and in eerily prescient episode in Afghanistan in which a character obviously modeled on Osama Bin Laden appears accompanied by a sidekick whose duty is to slay him instantly if his capture by the West seems imminent. Its gun-ho, harddrinking, table-turning fun, even if a little old fashioned now that we have so many other problems to worry about than the Russians—but it brings back vividly a time when they seemed a real threat. There are some breath-taking real-life moments with the Kennedy brothers, and with a bumbling Reagan, and with Vladimir Putin, now the leaders of Russia, who is here given a background that is extremely shady.

- New York Daily News

This fairy tale carries the reader through 45 years and three generations, and, true to the genre, ends with brave, noble heroes saving the day. The Brothers Grimm couldn￯﾿ﾽt have done it better.

Publishers Weekly

This impressive doorstopper of a book is like a family historical saga, except that the family is the American intelligence community. It has all the appropriate characters and tracks them over 40 years: a rogue uncle, the Sorcerer, a heavy-drinking chief of the Berlin office in the early Cold War days; a dashing hero, Jack McAuliffe, who ages gracefully and never loses his edge; a dastardly turncoat, who for the sake of the reader will not be identified here, but who dies nobly; a dark genius, the real-life James Jesus Angleton, who after the disclosure that an old buddy, British spy Kim Philby, had been a Russian agent all along, became a model of paranoia; a Russian exchange student who starts out with our heroes at Yale but then works for "the other side"; and endless assorted ladyfolk, wives, girlfriends and gutsy daughters who are not portrayed with anything like the gritty relish of the men. Littell, an old hand at the genre (he wrote the classic The Defection of A.J. Lewinter) keeps it all moving well, and there are convincing set pieces: the fall of Budapest, the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and an eerily prescient episode in Afghanistan, in which a character obviously modeled on Osama bin Laden appears, accompanied by a sidekick whose duty is to slay him instantly if his capture by the West seems imminent. It's gung-ho, hard-drinking, table-turning fun, even if a little old-fashioned now that we have so many other problems to worry about than the Russians but it brings back vividly a time when they seemed a real threat. There are some breathtaking real-life moments with the Kennedy brothers, and with a bumbling Reagan, and with Vladimir Putin, now the leader of Russia, who is here given a background that is extremely shady. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

For readers enthralled by the phrase walking back the cat (also the title of one of Littell's previous thrillers), this hefty tome will be nirvana. Littell, whose spy thrillers have ensnared readers since 1973's The Defection of A.J. Lewinter, here turns his literary eye and rapier-sharp mind on the Central Intelligence Agency. Starting during the Berlin years in the deep freeze of the Cold War, Littell follows two generations of agents and administrators right up through the 1995 mole episode. He devotes one gut-wrenching segment to the CIA's efforts in Afghanistan in 1983, which will have heightened significance for today's readers. Using historic figures amplified by artfully drawn figments of his abundant imagination, Littell also dramatizes the internal feuds and cutbacks that left the CIA, already vulnerable on the moral knife edge of espionage, barely able to meet the challenges of a changing world. Gathering its power slowly, the novel accelerates as events become more and more familiar and current. This is a work of fiction, yet its scholarship and analysis are outstanding. Littell avoids the didactic in favor of wit, irony, and ambiguity. A sure winner for libraries of all types. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/01.] Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. Read all 9 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

In his gripping new novel, Robert Littell brings a lost culture with little or no written history vibrantly back to life. Mingling real-life heroes and villains with compelling fictitious characters and mixing little-known facts with imaginary events that sometimes ring truer than reality, this master novelist has given us that rarity in the genre, a page turner that lives on in the reader's memory. — Charles McCarry

The Company is an exceptional novel. The writing is first rate, and the research is brilliant. It's just great storytelling. The search for SASHA kept me turning pages well into the night. The relationships that evolve over the years are fascinating, as are the different takes on the little people who are sacrificed for the big picture. It's an important book. — Steve Thayer

Every war needs a historian/novelist, and the Cold War is no exception . . . Littell is both prescient and savvy regarding the Soviet power structure, and we are left feeling that it is not over yet, and it could happen again . . . The Company is an epic tale peopled by heroes and villains who seem almost mythological in retrospect. The telling of the story keeps you riveted to the pages. — Nelson DeMille

If Robert Littell didn't invent the spy novel, he should have. — Tom Clancy