ALAN FURST'S SPIES OF THE BALKANS

Reviewing Furst's The Foreign Correspondent for the Spectator (you can find the whole review here) I wrote that in his novels it always seems to be twilight, and by that I meant the sort of twilight that comes when a shadow descends on life, the shadow being the inevitable (especially to us, reading fiction as history) coming of World War II. In this case, the war is about to visit Greece, as Italy launches its ill-fated surprise invasion, but it is the spectre of Germany which winds up changing the life of Costa Zannis, a very special policeman in Salonika, the most cosmopolitan of Greek cities.

Furst's books are always set in such places, way stations for those who come from cultures displaced by wars; Salonika sits close to the Yugoslav and Bulgarian borders, and of course far closer to its old rulers from the Ottoman Empire. Zannis himself, as it happens, has grown up in Paris; his assistant comes from Salonika's large Jewish community. Which makes it interesting as the story starts with the docking of a Turkish tramp freighter which carries a German passenger not mentioned in its manifest. He turns out to have photos of the Rupel Pass, the key to any invasion of Greece from the north. This is a direct reference to Furst's previous book, The Spies Of Warsaw, a signal of what is coming, but though Zannis may suspect the Germans eventually, he cannot realise what is coming for him.

Before long he is drawn into various operations. He begins to help Jews escaping from Germany while they still can, and is drawn into the British intelligence net. He returns to Paris to rescue a valuable British scientist marooned there. He does these things not from coercion, nor from nationalism, but because they are, basically, the right things to do, the human things to do, if one can do them. Although we often compare Furst with Graham Greene, and even better Eric Ambler, and rightly so, it's important to note the basic influence of Hemingway here, the concept of grace under pressure--as the war draws closer, as people's dilemmas become more and more pressing, Zannis acts not because he is forced to, but because he cannot think of a good reason why he should not.

Like most of Furst's protagonists he is a man of the world, not prone to panic, and comfortable surfacing in a strange country and making his way home. Unlike some, in this novel he draws upon deep resources, unlimited budgets of dollars, fortunate family connections in Paris, his network of friendly cops around the Balkans. Thriller fans may wonder where the suspense lies, but Furst isn't into chase scenes, what he does is set up atmosphere and let his characters embrace it. Costas, of course, is short for Constantine, who transformed Byzantium into Constantinople, and who was, in that sense, a prototype man of the world getting business done in dangerous times. There is also a sense of real dichotomy in this this. Furst shows wealthy people in both Germany and Greece; the former are helping friends to escape the Nazis, the latter are plotting their own getaway, should the Germans invade. As ever, money talks...

As does love. After discovering one lover was in fact a British spy (unbeknownst to him, which is his one fallibility) he then falls in love with a woman named Demetria, after the goddess of spring. As with Costa's own name, this one is rife with connotation. Spring of course is a time of rebirth, but in Furst's novels, it is also the time nations launch invasions. The story comes full circle, back to that Turkish tramp steamer, and if the ending seems a bit rushed, and perhaps a bit of what the ending of Casablanca might have been had Ilsa showed up at the railway station in Paris, it also raises the distinct possibility that Zannis could return, in Spies of the Levant perhaps, a novel that could make great things from the character of Smyrna/Izmir, and perhaps pay hommage to Ambler as well.

As I said when reviewing The Foreign Correspondent, Furst provides rather less action in every book. Yet in his moving of Zannis round the chess board of 1941 Europe, what he has done is raise all sorts of questions about the way we react not only to war, but to life. Furst's novels are like small but great films that were never made in the Forties, and like those films, they remind of the different values, the different personal values of the time. And the values that do not change over time. They are compelling, not because of their thriller suspense, but because of their human suspense, and that's why he is one of my absolute favourite writers.

Spies Of The Balkans by Alan Furst
Weidenfeld & Nicholson, £18.99, ISBN 9780297858881

FURST WITH THE MOST: SPIES OF WARSAW

The Spies Of Warsaw
Alan Furst
Weidenfeld & Nicholson 16.99
ISBN 9780297855415

'I think you like this kind of war,' Anna Szarbek tells the French military attache Jean-Francois Mercier, who of course is a spy, and this kind of war is of course no real war at all, just preparation for the war which they, in 1937 Warsaw, know is coming inevitably. 'This job has grown into me,' Mercier replies, and that could be the answer Alan Furst might give to the same question. 'This kind of war' has been his subject in nine previous novels, in which time he has recreated the black and white era of Thirties espionage with the precision, the emphasis on subtle shading of mood, the finely judged nuance of a Vermeer. What is particularly telling in this story is the way Mercier is himself made to serve as symbol of both the old, aristocratic Europe which is already in sharp, if ignorant, decline, and which is about to be blown away by Hitler's new world order. His family has a distinguised name, but their estates are in tatters, a metaphor for the nation and the old order.

Germany is preparing for war, and Mercier has spotted, indirectly, the evidence that their attack on France will come with tanks plowing through the Ardennes, something the French high command, secure behind their Maginot Line, regards as unthinkable. Meanwhile, the Nazis are becoming more and more active in Poland, and as they do, Polish intelligence, apart from the admirable Colonel Vyborg, whom Furst's regulars will recall from The Polish Officer, are more concerned with rounding up left-wingers, and protecting themselves from the Russians to their east.

Within Warsaw's world of espionage, and diplomacy, all is more gentlemanly, and Mercier finds himself beginning an affair with Anna, a French lawyer for the League of Nations, by definition a practitioner in an even-greater, more idealistic futility, whose family were Polish Jews. Every action has its ramifications, from the fate of Anna's former lover to the revenge of an SS officer whose kidnap plans in Warsaw Mercier foils. Meanwhile, Furst engages with all types of agents, and their motives, willing and unwilling, desperate or simply adjusting to the changing, and dangerous times. It proceeds at its own pace, the pieces linking tenuously, sometimes not at all, with the inevitability of failure an historical reality which, if anything, adds to the story's foggy atmosphere. More than anyone, Furst recalls Eric Ambler, particularly in the way his spies are often from the business world, motivated by personal greeds, and often people being forced into spying. In both cases, it is difficult to pretend one is engaged in a gentlemanly business.

The conclusion is more problematical, however, as Furst jumps ahead to the start of the war, and mentions that, 'after many adventures' (exactly the line Robert Mitchum uses in voice-over at the end of 'Tombstone'!), Mercier and Anna made their way to London, where they went to work for the French and Polish intelligence services. This suggests a sequel, if not multiple sequels, and even knowing that they make it to Britain, the story of their getting there, in Furst's hands, would not be disappointing.