AUSTIN, Texas (THE WASHINGTON POST) – Anna Pitoniak’s “The Helsinki Affair” takes place mostly in the present, but it has its roots in the Cold War years. Pitoniak was inspired by the classic spy novels of John le Carré and Graham Greene, which she loved but for one missing element: indomitable and complex female spies. So, she wrote “The Helsinki Affair.”
The novel, Pitoniak’s fourth, is atmospheric, well-researched and packed with tradecraft, conspiracies, murder and, best of all, two fascinating women – Amanda Cole and Kath Frost – hard-nosed CIA agents who thrive on chaos and who are often smarter than their male counterparts.
Amanda, 40, is the deputy station chief for the CIA’s Rome bureau. When a low-level bureaucrat with one of Russia’s intelligence services warns her that US Senator Robert Vogel is going to be assassinated in Cairo, she knows he’s telling the truth. When her station chief dismisses her concerns, and Vogel dies, Amanda takes over the bureau. Still, she’s restless, and she’s hungry for the field assignments that were the lifeblood of Cold War-era agents like her father, Charlie Cole.
Charlie once held plum postings in Africa and Europe, but in the late 1980s, something happened during his stint in Helsinki, and he was banished to Langley, Virginia. What transpired in Helsinki is slowly revealed, and it incorporates a classic bit of underhanded tradecraft – no spoilers here – that steadily stitches its way through the narrative. It also initiates the cleverly constructed moment when Amanda’s story and her father’s converge. Amanda, it turns out, may be forced to choose between her father and her country.
It all kicks off when Vogel’s chief of staff finds Charlie’s name in a cryptic file in the late senator’s office. She can’t decipher its contents, so she asks for Charlie’s help. He, for reasons not yet explained, turns it over to Amanda after destroying the file page with his name on it. So begins the unravelling of the puzzle connected to why the Russians killed Vogel and how Charlie may be connected. The conspiracy scheme hidden in Vogel’s file is so ingeniously murky (it involves meme stocks and market manipulations) that even Amanda can’t see her way through it – and readers, too, may have trouble following – and that’s when Kath Frost arrives on the scene.
Like Amanda, Kath is a jewel of a character. She’s a cowboy-boot-wearing CIA legend: At 73, she’s one of the last “Cold Warriors” who “had sniffed out more double agents than anyone in agency history.” And, Pitoniak writes with a wink, “Kath had accomplished all these things while also being a woman.” She’s the bloodhound who will make sense of the impenetrable file
In a recent essay, Pitoniak recalled the advice of a CIA psychologist she interviewed while researching female agents and spies. When creating a female spy character, the psychologist said, “just don’t make her a promiscuous headcase,” she wrote. Pitoniak took those words to heart. Amanda is petite and freckle-faced and buys most of her buttoned-up wardrobe from Talbots. Neither she nor Kath is a femme fatale – and they don’t have domestic aspirations. Like some of the men they work with, Amanda and Kath are more interested in their jobs. It’s all they want.
Like the best espionage thrillers, “The Helsinki Affair” trots around the globe. Amanda and Kath chase the truth through Rome, Washington, New York, London and Helsinki. Pitoniak pulls Russian oligarchs and a manipulative Russian agent (also a woman) into the plot. You may think you know what happened to Charlie in Helsinki, but Pitoniak has something unexpected up her sleeve. For Amanda and Kath, the novel’s conclusion also feels – hopefully – more like a beginning than an end. That’s because of how Pitoniak constructed these endearingly realistic characters. Let’s hope they make an appearance in a sequel. – CAROL MEMMOTT
